Le Jaguar (1996) - film review

François Perrin is a good-for-nothing Parisian who is being pursued by thugs for gambling debts he cannot pay.  One day, he happens to share an elevator with an Amazonian shaman, Wanu, who is making a visit to France to promote the cause of his people and try to save the South American rain forests.  To the surprise of both Perrin and Wanu’s escort, Campana, the shaman singles out Perrin as a "good man" and subsequently sticks to him like a limpet.  When Wanu has a heart attack, Campana appeals to Perrin to accompany him on a mission to the Amazonian jungle to try to recover the shaman’s stolen soul.  Anxious to avoid his creditors’ idea of justice, Perrin is only too keen to accept.  Fortunately, he has no idea what ordeals lie in store for him...

At its simplest, Le Jaguar can best be summarised as a serious, bigger budget version of the French comic classic La Chèvre .  Both films were written and directed by Francis Veber; both feature an improbable pairing of mutually incompatible characters named Campana and Perrin; and both films have essentially the same plot.  In La Chèvre, our heroes travel to South America to look for an abducted heiress.  In Le Jaguar, they travel to a similar location to recover a man’s soul.  With a résumé like that, it is not difficult to see which is probably the better film.

The main problem with Le Jaguar is that it tries hard to be a serious adventure film, of the Indiana Jones variety, but it can’t quite make it.  Francis Veber’s strength lies not in adventure drama but in sophisticated comic farce, and this film constantly gives the impression that he is trying for laughs when plainly there are few to be had.  The result is a very schizophrenic film, which appears to traverse six or seven different genres, making you wonder who on Earth the film was targeted at.  The comic pratfalls of Patrick Bruel – an odd choice of actor for a comic part – look rather ill alongside bouts of excessive violence (including sickeningly realistic lacerations of body parts) and all that smoochy boy-meets-girl- in-the-jungle malarkey.

Whilst it is painfully uneven and marred by a ridiculous plot, Le Jaguar is – it has to be said – technically well-made, and a rare example where Veber’s direction vastly surpasses his writing.  Good use is made of the Amazonian location, with some beautiful panoramic photography lending the film the polish and artistic credentials that rival any American blockbuster action movie.   Admittedly nowhere near as memorable as previous Veber pairings (such as the legendary Gérard Depardieu – Pierre Richard team), Jean Reno and Patrick Bruel complement each other well, both playing off their popular public images – Reno the monosyllabic, unflustered hard man, Bruel the likeable boy-like innocent who is constantly out of his depth.  Not a film for the sophisticated, and certainly not for those who like their films to make some kind of sense, Le Jaguar should still appeal to those hankering after that rarest of beasts, a big budget adventure film from France.

© James Travers 2003

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