Grosse fatigue (1994) - film review

Actor-director Michel Blanc is going through a rough time.  He is unable to get his next film off the ground, women no longer find him as irresistible as they should, and, to cap it all, he is unjustly arrested for the rape of Josianne Balasko.  Anxious that he may be on the brink of a nervous breakdown, his friend Carole Bouquet drags him off to her country estate.  Whilst working as hard as he can to chill out in the Lubéron, Michel is surprised when the locals refer to him as Patrick.  The ghastly truth is suddenly revealed: Michel has a double who is wilfully masquerading as him...

A decade after directing his first film, Marche à l’ombre (1984), Michel Blanc once again takes up the directorial baton and the result is Grosse fatigue, one of the most hilarious films ever made about the perils and pitfalls of celebrity.  Starring alongside Blanc in the film is the radiantly beautiful Carole Bouquet who fulfils just about ever male fantasy in the space of about 90 minutes (well, the clean ones at least), the perfect cool-as-a-cucumber complement to Blanc’s neurotic self-obsessive portrayal of himself.  It says much about the character and talent of both actors that they are prepared to parody their own personas to this extent – acute self-mockery is evidently no longer the sole preserve of the English.

Accompanying Blanc and Bouquet on this wild, black comic, Woody Allen-style fantasy are some of the biggest names in French cinema, although most make only a fleeting appearance.  The granddaddy of them all is Philippe Noiret, who features in the film’s brilliantly ironic final passage, lambasting the current state of the French film industry with real passion and some degree of accuracy.   The icing on the very richly spiced gateau is Roman Polanski failing to recognise Blanc and Noiret and then offering them bit parts in his next film (whilst Blanc’s usurping double makes a film about Blanc having a usurping double...)

Director Bertrand Blier is credited with the idea of Grosse fatigue, and Michel Blanc acknowledges the fact by appropriating something of the style of Blier’s very individual style of cinema.  Whilst the plot is extraordinarily far-fetched, and the farce is carried to extraordinary lengths in places, it is, for all that, a very human film, in which Blanc doesn’t shirk to show us the downside of being a well-known personality.  It’s a film which explores the issue of identity and what it means to lose that identity – fame being one sure way to achieve just that.

This is a film that will doubtless have far greater appeal to enthusiasts of French cinema.  Those with no or little appreciation of the subject probably wouldn’t be watching the film in the first place but, if they did, they would almost certainly be perplexed by the odd references to Depardieu, Buñuel, Le Père noël and the like.   For those who like their cinema French-style, Grosse fatigue is an absolute treat – an intelligent, fast-moving comedy that is relentlessly funny right from the word go.

© James Travers 2006

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