Les Petits câlins (1978) - film review

Sophie, a young mother who has lost the care of her daughter after her divorce, lives with her friends, Corine and Sylivie, in an apartment in the Paris suburbs.  Her need to be loved drives her to seduce men, but disappointment inevitably follows.  Through her job as a researcher for a polling agency she meets Antoine, a shy architect.  The two are instantly attracted to one another but Antoine’s fails to make his mark as a lover.  Undeterred, Sophie invites Antoine to dinner that night, but he fails to keep the appointment.  Sophie takes her revenge by spraying graffiti on the walls of his apartment – not knowing that the apartment actually belongs to his employer.  When they are reunited, Sophie and Antoine are ambivalent about their relationship.  With Antoine away from home, Sophie takes her chances with a stranger she meets on a train.  This liaison satisfies Sophie’s appetite in bed but there is clearly nowhere the relationship can go.   Thereupon Antoine re-enters the frame.  He says he loves her, but can he really be the man for Sophie…?

Les Petits câlins marks the first chapter in the eventful career of director Jean-Marie Poiré, who is best known for his now legendary French film comedies Le Père Noël est une ordure (1982), Papy fait de la résistance (1983) and Les Visiteurs (1993).  Those who are familiar with Poiré’s more popular work may be surprised by this fairly conventional comedy-drama.  Les Petits câlins shows a maturity, a compassion and insight into human nature that is hard to find in Poiré’s better known films, although there are also some great visual comedy, a hallmark of this director.  It isn’t quite Eric Rohmer, but the film’s portrayal of young people’s feelings about romantic love is sensitively handled and is both poignant and funny.  And the performances are seductive and almost faultless.

The star of the film is Dominique Laffin, who plays the man hungry Sophie convincingly and sympathetically.  On the strength of this performance you sense that she should have gone on to enjoy a great career as a film star.  Unfortunately this was not to be; she died eight years after making this film, aged 33.  Instead, long-term fame went to Josiane Balasko who would become a highly regarded writer and director in France, as well as a popular comic actress.   Claire Maurier appears in the film in a supporting role, almost twenty years after playing the mother of François Truffaut’s alter ego in Les 400 coups (1959).  And there’s a small appearance by the incomparable Gérard Jugnot, some years before he, like Balasko, became a much-loved celebrity.

© James Travers 2004

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