Les Apprentis (1995) - film review

Antoine is an impoverished aspiring writer who squats in a Paris flat with a good-for-nothing lay-about, Fred.  They have no money, no prospects, and within a very short time, have no where to live.  To raise the deposit for a place to live, they raid the safe of Antonie’s newspaper employers.  From that point on, things only seem to get worse...

In many ways, Les Apprentis is for Guillaume Depardieu what Blier’s Les Valseuses was for his father, Gérard Depardieu.   This too is an acutely funny black comedy which revels in its anarchistic sense of humour, whilst simultaneously presenting a real-life human tragedy.  Fred and his reluctant friend, Antonie, are in a hole out of which there appears to be no escape – a situation in which all too many people in our society face.  Whereas Blier resorted all too frequently to shock tactics in his film, Les Apprentis is a much less aggressive, more humane film which engages its audience instead of upsetting them.

In this film, the young Guillaume Depardieu is paired with the slightly less young, but equally charming, François Cluzet.  This is a case of perfect casting – the sardonic wit of Cluzet playing perfectly off the street-urchin loutish innocence of Depardieu.  The two characters are complete opposites in every way except one – they are both abject failures.  This one thing they share is the basis for an unlikely friendship which provides the film with its great comic foundation, and also its credibility.

© James Travers 1999

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