Un éléphant ça trompe énormément (1976) - film review

Etienne, a happily married man with children, instantly falls in love when he sees a woman wearing a bright red dress.  Like a mad man, he pursues her, even changing his wardrobe and taking up horse-riding to please her.  Meanwhile, his friends are having problems of their own.  Bouly, a serial philanderer, is distraught when his wife walks out on him, taking with her the entire contents of his apartment.  Simon, Paris’ worst doctor, is hounded by his mother, and the flamboyant Daniel has a secret life which is no less turbulent.  For Etienne, at least, things appear to be going well...

The romantic comedy is the kind of film which the French are particularly good at making, and Un éléphant ça trompe énormément is a pleasing example of the genre.  Whilst the plot is hardly original, it contains some delightfully amusing comic situations (including Jean Rochefort attempting to take up horse riding and Claude Brasseur smashing up a restaurant whilst pretending to be a blind man).

Jean-Loup Dabadie has a reputation as a good screenwriter in France, and this film has one of his best scripts.  The comic performances are also impressive, with Jean Rochefort being particularly well served by his comic role.

The film uses the charming voice-over narrative technique which director Yves Robert used effectively in his 1990s two-part epic La Gloire de mon père and Le Chateau de ma mère - even the music sounds remarkably similar (not surprising, since Vladmir Cosma provided the score for all three films).

The film was remade in 1984 as The Woman in Red, with Gene Wilder directing and starring in the film.  As with most American remakes of French films, the original is by far the better film.

© James Travers 2002

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