Zig Zag Story (1983) - film review

A drop of water falling from the guttering of a building causes a chain reaction ending in a traffic jam which allows Gil Darmon, an aspiring painter, to meet Cat, a radio presenter.  It’s love at first sight and it’s not long before Cat has moved into the loft apartment which Gil shares with his friend Bob, a sex-obsessed photographer.  When a young girl is abducted, Gil finds himself the prime suspect...

The sequel to the popular comedy Et la tendresse?... Bordel! (1979) is this uninhibited anarchic romp which looks as if it has set out to break every taboo whilst parodying social attitudes to love and sex.  The film is painfully uneven – brilliantly funny in places, excruciatingly laboured in others – and more politically incorrect than you can imagine.   Fabrice Luchini steals the show as a compulsive voyeur, although the scenes where he is seen drooling over a pre-teen girl and later when he is seduced by a stripping nun come dangerously close to the thin red line of acceptability.  There are some great jokes, but the film really is just too silly, too O.T.T., too provocative to be anywhere near as satisfying as Patrick Schulmann’s earlier Bordel film.

© James Travers 2007

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