Putain d’histoire d’amour (1981) - film review

Taxi driver Paul is addicted to gambling. When his colleagues offer him a bet to ferry a customer across Paris in record time he accepts without hesitation.  The wager backfires and he loses a job – again.  Unable to break the news to his wife, Rose, he passes the evening in a casino where he fritters away what little money he has left.  Then he meets Eva, an enigmatic striptease artist, who shares his passion for gambling…

In one of his earliest significant screen roles, Richard Berry distinguishes himself admirably in a part that appears to have been custom-made for him – that of a loveable, but rather complicated, loser.  The film is a quintessentially French comedy-drama – a quirky, rigorously unsentimental love story involving two luckless, and ostensibly ill matched, protagonists.  Whilst the plot is a little unconvincing in places, the film’s noirish feel, the touches of black humour and, most of all, Richard Berry’s sympathetic performance make it an appealing piece of cinema.  Director Gilles Béhat brings an unusual tongue-in-cheek style and sincerity to the film, which makes it a poignant but not too gloomy portrayal of addiction and mid-life crisis.

© James Travers 2004

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