La Soupe aux choux (1981) - film review

In the remote French countryside, two old men – Le Glaude and Le Bombé – live out their solitary retirement, contenting themselves with their friendship, their wine and their irresistible cabbage soup.  One evening, their display of flatulence attracts an extra-terrestrial, La Denrée, who strikes up an immediate friendship with Le Glaude after tasting his cabbage soup.   The alien takes a canister of the soup back to his home planet, Oxo, and, to show their gratitude, the Oxoniens bring Le Glaude’s dead wife, Francine, back to life.   For the misanthropic old man, finding himself again married to a woman of twenty is not the happiest of outcomes...

After the phenomenal success of Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres (1979), director Jean Girault and comic star Louis de Funès were tempted to revisit the genre of sci-fi spoof with La Soupe aux choux.  Both films were part of a craze in the 1970s and early 1980s for UFOs and science-fiction, following on the heels of Steven Spielberg’s box office hit Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).  La Soupe aux choux is closer in spirit to that ground-breaking film and, to some extent, can be viewed as a fairly effective parody of that film.  The film was based on a popular novel by René Fallet, which De Funès had read and was very keen to make into a film.

Although La Soupe aux choux was a great commercial success, it received some very bad reviews when it was first released.  Certainly, this is an easy film to fault, both in terms of its content and its presentation.  Jacques Villeret in a yellow jumpsuit and making odd noises with his tongue has to be cinema’s most unconvincing extra-terrestrial.  Much of the comedy is in appallingly bad taste, resorting to the lowest possible level with its relentless series of fart jokes.  Most significantly, worn down by illness and ill-served by a mediocre script, the great Louis de Funès appears to be reduced to a caricature of his former self.

In spite of its faults, La Soupe aux choux remains a surprisingly insightful and entertaining film.  It dares – albeit somewhat falteringly – to takle serious issues – such as the way society treats its older citizens.  There are some touching moments – such as when the character played by De Funès is reunited with his rejuvenated wife and realises that, although his love for her is still very much alive, he cannot be her husband.   Above all, the film is tremendous fun.  Once you get past the awful fart contest which starts the film, it is difficult not to be amused by the mix of Gallic comedy and kitsch absurdity which is the film’s sci-fi strand.  Twenty years on, the film has enjoyed a positive reappraisal, and has attained the status of a cult classic in France.

© James Travers 2003

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?