Le Confident de ces dames (1959) - film review

Owing to a shortage of doctors, the inhabitants of the little Italian town Figuerol look to their veterinary Julien Goberti to treat their ailments as well as those of their pets.  Even when a qualified doctor, Maria Bonifaci, arrives in the town, the locals still prefer the healing touch of Julien.   Unable to attract clients of her own, Maria soon becomes jealous of Julien’s popularity and takes steps to undermine him, without success.  When Julien successfully cures an international star, the world media descends on the town and the modest vet becomes an instant celebrity...

After Coiffeur pour dames (1952) and Le Couturier de ces dames (1956), Le Confident de ces dames completes a loose trilogy of films, directed by Jean Boyer, in which Fernandel plays a likeable professional whose healing hands have an irresistible allure for women of all persuasions.  Filmed in Italy, the film sees Fernandel sharing the limelight with some well-known Italian actors, notably the rising starlet Sylva Koscina, who found fame through a series of spy thrillers and historical epics, and Ugo Tognazzi, one of Italian cinema’s foremost comic actors.  This was Tognazzi’s first outing in a French film; he is better known for his outrageous turns in La Grande bouffe (1973) and La Cage aux folles (1978).  Denise Grey, who began her illustrious career way back in the silent era, appears uncannily at ease in Fernandel’s mad-cap universe and very nearly steals the show, facing down even Ugo Tognazzi in the charisma and comedy stakes.

By the late 1950s, Fernandel’s career was distinctly on the wane.  Le Confident de ces dames was just one in a long line of his films that was both mauled by the critics and failed spectacularly at the box office.  Although the actor’s fortunes would be spectacularly reversed with his next film, La Vache et le prisonnier (1959) (which attracted an audience of over 8 million), most critics were happy to write Fernandel off as a worn-out has-bean.  No one could mistake Le Confident de ces dames for a classic of French cinema, but it is a sprightly little comedy that is buoyed up by the entertaining contributions of its lead actors.  The chaotic plot is redeemed by some highly amusing comic situations, which occasionally take a turn for the surreal - notably the sequence in which the town’s afflicted resort to seeking medical advice from Fernandel via the intermediary of their pets.  Oddly, the film probably has more relevance today than when it was first seen, since it can easily be read as a mordant satire on the cult of the celebrity.

© James Travers 2011

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