Le Téléphone rose (1975) - film review

Benoît Castejac is the owner of a small factory in Toulouse that has run into financial difficulties.  He knows that the only way to save the firm that he inherited from his father is to merge with a larger American corporation, Fielding.  Invited to Paris for a business lunch, Castejac meets Fielding’s public relations man, Levêque, who introduces him to his niece, Christine.   Castejac does not know that Christine is in fact a call girl, who was hired to distract him into signing an agreement which favours Fielding’s owner, Morrisson.  The ruse works a treat and Castejac has to return to his factory with the news that a quarter of his workforce is to be axed.  But worse is to come.  Fielding’s engineering consultant, Delorme, discovers that Castejac’s business is heavily in debt and union leader Bastide is gearing up for a protracted strike.  As his world begins to fall apart, Castejac becomes increasingly obsessed with Christine and is determined to see her again...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

This popular comedy-drama offers a characteristically Gallic assault on global capitalism, making the comparison between prostitution and big business a little too glibly to be totally convincing.  Still, Francis Veber’s script and Edouard Molinaro’s direction are up to scratch and Le Téléphone rose manages to entertain whilst making a few effective digs at the kind of morally dubious business practices that have become all too commonplace these days.  Veber and Molinaro had previously collaborated on the hit comedy L’Emmerdeur (1973) and would later pool their resources on La Cage aux folles (1978), a film that scaled new heights in camp comedy.

Le Téléphone rose would have been a pretty forgettable film were it not for the onscreen chemistry between its two leading performers, Pierre Mondy and Mireille Darc.  Darc is predictably cast as the tart with a heart (la pute au grand coeur) and Mondy is the sucker who falls for her as part of  Michael Lonsdale’s evil plan for world domination (clearly, Londsale is already preparing for the part of the Bond villain he would later play in Moonraker).   Both Mondy and Darc are superb in this film, bringing respectively humanity and glamour to a drab story that is dripping with calculated cynicism.

© James Travers 2010

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