Its original title is Les Valseuses, which translates into English as "the waltzers", a vulgar French slang term for "the testicles".

It is one of the most controversial films in French cinema due to its vulgarity, depiction of sexual acts, nudity and amorality.

[3][4][5][6] Jean-Claude and Pierrot harass and sexually assault an older woman in a banlieue, steal her purse and run away.

Pierrot fears that he has become impotent because of his wounds and suggests sabotaging the steering of the DS before giving it back to the owner, imagining him having an accident on a winding road.

After encountering police on the train station, Jean-Claude and Pierrot decide to lie low and go to a deserted coastal resort, where they break into a vacation home to stay there.

When she requests to be kissed and begins screaming and throwing things, they shoot her in the leg and leave her bound to a chair in the salon.

They give her money to buy some clothes, bring her to the beach and have a lavish oyster dinner with her.

Bertrand Blier based the screenplay on his own novel Les Valseuses, which had been published by éditions Robert Laffont in 1972.

[7] For the scene where the character played by Brigitte Fossey gets her breasts sucked by Patrick Dewaere's, the actress, who slipped into this role, "was not frightened", but Bertrand Blier still remembers a moment when the actress got a little scared, because she "had a little dizziness when she was caught between the two guys, one who sucked her and the other titillating her from behind.

[9] In 1974, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Despite its occasional charm, its several amusing moments and the touching scenes played by Jeanne Moreau, Going Places is a film of truly cynical decadence.

"[10] Pauline Kael, on the other hand, writing in The New Yorker, said that "Going Places was perhaps the first film from Europe since Breathless and Weekend and Last Tango in Paris to speak to us in a new, first hand way about sex and sex fantasies; it did it in a terse, cool, assured style...with a dreamy sort of displacement.

[...] The road/buddy movie was scarcely new 16 years ago, but Blier's strategies in the telling of his sexual odyssey remain fresh, outrageous and inspired."

Thomas continued: "Jean-Claude is the precursor of all the earthy, passionate men Depardieu has brought to life on the screen.

What's more, Blier is interested more in Jean-Claude and Pierrot as sexual chauvinists than as petty criminals, and as they learn to be more considerate lovers they become more likable.

Above all, they embody the sure-fire appeal of all movie anti-heroes, free spirits who live entirely for the moment and at all times follow their impulse.