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.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Jean-Jacques Annaud film:
La Guerre du feu (1981)