Un éléphant ça trompe énormément
1976 Comedy
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Credits
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Summary
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...
Review
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 Write a review for this film... |
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