Didier (1997)

Didier is a French film comedy first released in 1997, directed by Alain Chabat.  The film stars Jean-Pierre Bacri, Alain Chabat, Isabelle Gélinas, Lionel Abelanski and Michel Bompoil.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Jean-Pierre Costa is a football manager upon whom fate appears not to be smiling.  First, a friend, Annabelle, dumps a pet Labrador named Didier on him whilst she goes off to make a report in Los Angeles.  Next, one of his star players is injured, leaving him one player short for an important match, on which his career rests.  As if things could not get any worse, Costa wakes up one morning to find that that Didier has been transformed into a man…

Alain Chabat’s first solo production as a film director was the surprisingly successful fantasy comedy Didier.  What plot there is in the film could be easily be written on the back of a small postage stamp, but that scarcely matters.  What makes this an entertaining film is the boundless energy and sense of fun that Chabat, a very accomplished comedian in his own right, brings to it, both as a director and as an actor (he plays the human form of Didier).  Chabat was rewarded not just with healthy box office returns but also with the best first film César.

Chabat manages to get some fine performances from his co-stars, particularly the very talented and perfectly cast Jean-Pierre Bacri.  The script is also noteworthy with some stunningly funny comic situations, although some of the jokes are in appallingly bad taste.

It is perhaps a shame that Chabat religiously avoided getting into any intelligent philosophical issues, such as the relationship between man and beast and what mankind can learn from animals.  Instead, the dim viewer is fed a vitamin-free diet of burlesque comedy and expected to swallow it without comment.  Nonetheless, this is a very entertaining film and some of the film’s more ambitious sequences are expertly realised.

© James Travers 2002

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