Coup de tête (1979)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud

Film Review

Jean-Jacques Annaud's filmmaking career began, auspiciously, with a commercial failure and an Oscar win.  La Victoire en chantant (1976), a dark anti-colonial comedy, may have impressed the critics and the members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but it had little impact at the French box office. Although Annaud received offers from several American film producers immediately after this promising debut, he instead opted to make a low budget film in his own country, and that film, Coup de tête, is now considered to be one of his finest, and one that is totally unlike any other film that the director would subsequently make.  Indeed, anyone familiar with Annaud's later films - a slew of mainstream blockbusters which include La Guerre du feu (1981), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Bear (1988), Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and Enemy at the Gates (2001) - will have some difficulty believing that he made this film, a downbeat comedy which is his only film set in present day France.  Coup de tête may not have been a great success when it was first released, but it now enjoys the status of a cult classic and is one of Annaud's most likeable films, although it is virtually unknown outside France.

A charming mix of social comedy and modern fable, Coup de tête is a film that takes great delight in ripping the stuffing out of class prejudice and bourgeois hypocrisy.  The film may at first appear lightweight in comparison with Annuad's subsequent grand cinematic endeavours, but it is astute, witty and true to life - qualities that are not often associated with this director's oeuvre.  The film was scripted by Francis Veber, who has written or directed some of the best French film comedies of the last twenty years, including La Cage aux folles (1978) and Le Dîner de cons (1998).  The central protagonist in the film, François Perrin, is a recurring character in Veber's gag-saturated screenplays.  He first featured in Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972), and later in La Chèvre (1981), portrayed on both occasions by Pierre Richard.  In Coup de tête, Perrin is played by Patrick Dewaere, one of the most high-profile French actors of the period.

Despite his popularity with the French public, at the time he made this film Patrick Dewaere's professional reputation was beginning to decline as a result of the actor's temperamental nature (which may have stemmed from the same psychological imbalance which later led him to take his own life).  In accepting the lead role in Coup de tête, Dewaere broke his contract with Gaumont, for whom he had agreed to star alongside Pierre Richard in Gérard Oury's La Carapate.  A year later, he would become bête noire numéro un of the French media when he viciously assaulted a journalist, reputedly for disclosing secrets about his private life.  Dewaere's hostility towards the press and his reluctance to promote his films made him something of a liability and so, instead of becoming a major international star, as his nearest contemporary Gérard Depardieu had become, he became increasingly marginalized and ended his career appearing in modest auteur films, albeit ones directed by some of France's most talented filmmakers.

Patrick Dewaere's performance in Coup de tête is easily one of his most memorable and it is his amiable hippie presence which elevates this fairly insignificant little comedy to the level of a popular classic.  Dewaere is at his best when he is playing the put-upon outsider, the maverick who has nothing to lose and who can tell society exactly what he thinks of it.  His version of François Perrin has nothing in common with Pierre Richard's inept clown; he is a kind of latter day Sanjuro, an urban samurai on a one-man crusade to get up the noses of the bourgeoisie and put fear into their souls by showing that not only can a member of the plebeian class think for himself, he can also turn middle class morality against itself, exacting a just retribution without lifting a finger.  This is the Patrick Dewaere we all know and love - the sympathetic anarchist who goes through life casually ignoring constraints and conventions, the kind of guy our society badly needs to keep the self-interested, self-important nouveaux riches and their kind awake at nights.

Film Synopsis

Life in the small industrial French town of Trincamp revolves entirely around the local football club.  When François Perrin is dismissed from the club for injuring the star player, his fortunes take a turn for the worst.  Shortly after losing his job, he is wrongly arrested for rape and sent to prison.  Perrin is given a lucky break when the coach taking the football team to a key match crashes.  With several players injured, the president of the club has no option but to get Perrin released so he can play in the match.  Whilst out of prison, Perrin realises that the people who are depending on him to win the game are the same people who had him arrested on fabricated evidence.  How should he take his revenge - by exposing this fraud?  No, he has a better idea...