Fallait pas!... (1996) - film review

After a disastrous outdoor training course in the snowy mountains, Bernard Leroy hastens back to his fiancée’s château on the eve of their wedding.  On the way, his car breaks down and he asks for help at a mountain chalet.  To his surprise, he discovers that the inhabitants of the chalet are a covert sect who are in the process of committing mass suicide.  Bernard only just manages to escape with his life, taking with him one of the members of the sect, Sébastien, and a suitcase containing a vast sum of money.  The organisers of the sect, Magic and Solomuka, pursue Bernard, and will resort to any means to recover their ill-gotten gains...

There are some subjects which naturally do not lend themselves well to comedy, and the activities of evil, mind-bending sects is arguably one of them.  Inspired by the headline-grabbing real-life drama of the Temple Solaire in 1994, Gérard Jugnot chose this as the subject of his seventh film, showing distinctly poor judgement when it comes to deciding what makes decent comedy.  After Jugnot’s previous, pretty respectable, films, Fallait pas! came as something of a disappointment to many French cinema-goers.

Although the film’s subject matter is a hard and bitter pill to swallow, Gérard Jugnot does a surprisingly effective job in making a boisterous comedy out of it.  He is assisted by a talented cast who make the absolute most of the material they are given.  Jean Yanne’s over-the-top performance is a delight – the stuff of pantomime but utterly hilarious, and François Morel is perfectly cast as Jugnot’s inoffensive but totally useless sidekick.  Jugnot has some difficulty balancing the film’s comic and darker thriller elements but the film works surprisingly well in spite of its inappropriate subject and its ludicrous plot.

© James Travers 2004

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