La Gifle (1974) - film review

Jean Doulean is a 50-year-old teacher at a Parisian school.  For several years he has been separated from his wife Hélène, who lives with another man in England.  He has since begun a relationship with another woman, Madeleine, but his newfound happiness proves to be short-lived.  After a fracas with the police, Jean is told that he must be transferred to another school.  Then he learns that his 18-year-old daughter wants to give up her studies so that she can live with her boyfriend Marc.  After a violent disagreement, which ends with Jean slapping her in the face, Isabelle leaves him and goes to live with her mother in England.
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

Director Claude Pinoteau followed up his stylish thriller Le Silencieux (1973) with this amiable but somewhat shallow portrayal of the problematic relationship between a teenage daughter and her middle-aged father.   The film presages Pinoteau’s subsequent (more convincing) coming-of-age comedy-drama La Boum (1980), and was a notable box office hit, achieving an audience of just under four million in France.  Isabelle Adjani is remarkable in her first major screen role, her portrayal of a rebellious adolescent beautifully complemented by Lino Ventura, who plays the father who is reluctant to let his daughter go.  This is an atypical role for Ventura, who is more strongly associated with tough gangster and cop roles in gritty policier films.   Ventura’s sensitive and subtly moving performance brings an authenticity to La Gifle which is lacking in the script, and which Pinoteau occasionally undermines with some heavy-handed direction. 

Pinoteau’s shortcomings as a director are pretty well negated by the quality of the performances.  As well as a few established actors (Annie Girardot, Georges Wilson and Nicole Courcel) the supporting cast includes several highly talented young actors at the start of their careers, many of whom (Michel Aumont, Nathalie Baye, Richard Berry and André Dussollier) would go on to be major players in French cinema.  Improbably cast as Annie Girardot’s love interest is the well-known British character actor Robert Hardy, just a few years before he found fame as Siegfried Farnon in the long-running BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small.  Hardy (who had previously worked with Pinoteau and Ventura on Le Silencieux) evokes perfectly the French idea of English charm and eccentricity - his strained confrontation with Ventura (who evokes perfectly the English idea of French surliness) is the most memorable thing about this film.

© James Travers 2010

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