Le Coup du berger (1956)

Le Coup du berger is a French film comedy first released in 1956, directed by Jacques Rivette.  The film stars Virginie Vitry, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Jean-Claude Brialy.  It has also been released under the title: Fool’s Mate.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


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Le Coup du berger is a nice short film by Jacques Rivette, one of the less famous star directors of the Nouvelle Vague, and one of the most active Cahiers du Cinéma film critics.  Dated 1956, the film displays some of the characteristic devices of that important French artistic movement: priority to the treatment of form, critical focus on bourgeois (bad) habits and parricidal attitude to the official French filmmakers (in this case, Jean Delannoy, in the cocktail scene with Truffaut, Godard and Chabrol as guests).  This is a comedy about two-sided marital infidelity, with poignant dialogue and ingenious use of objects: mirrors to imply duplicity, mink skin that becomes rabbit skin, two crystal cups against one at the dinner table of the couple, the shadow of the seemingly innocent and indifferent husband that calls to mind the villain in American film noir, the portraits of the wife and her sister (painted by the husband),  and the cup served finally to the wife, perhaps to drink to her defeat.  Couperin’s baroque music joyfully accompanies these frivolous adventures.  As narrator, Jacques Rivette guides us through a sly game, where the loser and the spectators will be the only ones who will know all the moves and naturally will be doomed to remain silent.
Adam Gai (Israel) 

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