Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (1959)

Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick is a French film comedy first released in 1959, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.  The film stars Jean-Claude Brialy, Anne Collette and Nicole Berger.  It has also been released under the title: Charlotte et Véronique.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Véronique and Charlotte are two students who share a room together in Paris.  One afternoon, whilst Charlotte is waiting for Véronique in the Luxembourg gardens, she is accosted by an attractive young man Patrick who soon manages to seduce her with his charms.  They agree to meet up later for a dinner date.  No sooner has Charlotte left the scene than Véronique appears, and Patrick manages to work his charms on her as well.  When they next meet, the two girls share the news that they have each acquired a boyfriend named Patrick, little thinking that it is the same man...

Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick, a delightfully witty and charming romantic comedy, is one of Jean-Luc Godard’s earliest films, a short film, yet it betrays the skill and innovative flair which the great director would unleash in his subsequent full length films of the 1960s.

With its almost Shakespearean plotting, this is a more conventional film than its partner, Godard’s other short film Charlotte et son jules.  Both are centred around the fickle folly of adolescent love in and around the chic Rive Gauche of Paris.  Both films also feature a lead actor who would become emblematic of French cinema in the following decade – here, in a few short scenes, Jean-Claude Brialy establishes himself as the master seducer.

The film was remade in 1992 by Etienne Faure, with a now middle-aged Jean-Claude Brialy looking on sagely as a young Thomas Langmann attempts to repeat his own youthful flirtations.

© James Travers 2000

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