Françoise Last is the story of a young woman who refuses to be dictated to, even though she knows she is not always looking in the right direction. It’s a journey by hitch-hiking, by train, on foot, that she undertakes with a smirk on her face, sharpened canines and a black marker in her jeans pocket, to sign her name, to leave her mark. You always go looking for someone, not necessarily someone else.
Françoise was seventeen years old in the summer of 1997. She does as she pleases. She flew for the first time when she was nine. She steals because she can. All sorts of things, magazines, money, spray cans to tag trains.
In its April 1963 issue, Life magazine tells the story of Helen Klaben and Ralph Flores’ ordeal in the Yukon forests, where they survived forty-nine days before being rescued in extremis. Ever since she read it, Françoise has been fascinated by this story. One morning, tired of squatting in unoccupied houses, she leaves. She wants to know how Helen Klaben felt when the plane she was on began its uncontrolled descent to the top of the black spikes. Unbeknownst to her parents, she leaves and crosses the U.S. border.
