La Soif de l’or (1993) - film review

Urbain Donnadieu’s first love is money.  It’s also his second, third and fourth love.  The only reason he married – a tax inspector named Fleurette – was to evade a fine for tax evasion.  For several years, he has been stealing money from his construction company and buying gold bars with his ill-gotten gains.  His plan is to deposit all this wealth in a Swiss Bank, where neither his wife – whom he is about to divorce – nor the French State can get at it.  Accompanied by his money-grabbing grandmother Zézette, Urbain heads off for Switzerland, with his gold concealed in the walls of a model house on the back of a trailer.  Unfortunately, his scheme is threatened by his wife and his embittered ex-chauffeur, who are determined to get his money at any cost...

The deadly sin of avarice is the subject of this zany Gérard Oury comedy.  Molière it certainly isn’t but Oury manages at least to provide a respectable eighty minutes of good family entertainment.  Whilst it isn’t in the league of the director’s earlier great comedies – La Grande vadrouille (1965), etc – Oury still knows how to make an audience laugh and La Soif de l’or is just one long sequence of hilarious comic set-pieces.  Admittedly, a few of the jokes are laboured and repetitive, and a few plot ideas – such as Urbain chasing after a girl at the risk of losing his fortune – don’t make sense.  The casting is also a disappointment.  Oury’s film comedies really need a great comic performer - someone like Bourvil, Louis de Funès or Pierre Richard – to provide a focal point.  Although Christian Clavier does a reasonably good job, he’s hardly up to the task, and without much help from a pretty undistinguished supporting cast (Catherine Jabob is just plain irritating), La Soif de l’or lacks that magical spark which lights up Oury’s more successful comedies.

© James Travers 2006

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