Film Review
Gérard Pirès followed up his deliriously eccentric debut feature
Erotissimo (1968), an uninhibited
sideswipe at the advertising industry, with an even more unbridled kind of
free-format comedy, although this time the obvious lack of anything vaguely
resembling a storyline to hold it all together results in a film that is
a tedious muddle rather than an inspired anarchic romp.
Fantasia
chez les ploucs is loosely based on Charles Williams's pulp fiction crime
novel
The Diamond Bikini, first published in 1956. Ten years
on, Williams's idiosyncratic brand of noir fiction would have a far more
successful brush with French cinema - as the inspiration for François
Truffaut's swansong
Vivement
dimanche! (1983). Marcel Ophüls's
Peau de banane (1963) is
another notable French adaptation of the American crime writer's work.
Not content with Charles Williams's own brand of humour, Pirès overloads
the film with his own somewhat more puerile idea of comedy. As a result,
the film ends up as a haphazard deluge of madcap situations that looks like
the result of a horrible collision between Godard's
Pierrot le fou (1965) and
several mashed together episodes of
The Dukes of Hazzard.
Pirès clearly has some kind of fetish about burning wheel tyre and
trashing motor vehicles in the most spectacular way imaginable (in this respect
the film looks like a dry run for his subsequent not-so-environmentally friendly
romp
Taxi (1998)), and apparently
no interest whatsoever in little things like characterisation or telling
a story that makes some kind of sense.
Fantasia chez les ploucs
is
the most gloriously scattergun kind of French comedy, and you'd
almost swear that everyone involve in its production was suffering from a
chronic case of attention deficit disorder - either that or just two many
liquid lunches.
The film was deluged with lousy reviews when it first came out and yet it
still managed to attract a fairly impressive audience of 1.4 million in France
- although this was almost certainly down to the calibre of the cast that
Pirès somehow lured on board. The fact that the film boasted
two of the big beasts of French cinema in the early 1970s - Jean Yanne and
Lino Ventura - made it an easy sell, and with the addition of a scantily
clad Mireille Darc at her most seductively sensual it was probably too good
to miss. Suffice it to say that this irresistible triumvirate is just
about all that the film has going for it. Even with a respectable supporting
cast (Georges Demestre, Jacques Dufilho, Rufus), none of the secondary characters
has any impact, and even the the principals are fighting a losing battle
to make their characters more than just the silliest kind of comicbook clots.
The chemistry between Yanne and Ventura is the one reward the film offers
in return for its relentless dross, and you can't help wishing the two actors
had been better served by the script - particularly as this was their one
and only big screen pairing. Watch closely and you'll be surprised
to catch a glimpse of Alain Delon (Darc's real-life partner at the time)
in a cameo role. Awful though the film is,
Fantasia chez les ploucs does
have some nostalgia value. It is stuffed to the eyeballs with the counterculture
craziness of the era in which it was made and is helped by a suitably hip
avant-garde score from the Dutch band Ekseption, who were very much in vogue
at the time. None of this prevents the film from being a Grade A turkey,
though. After Gérard Pirès's remarkable debut feature
it was a spectacular descent into sub-mediocrity.
© James Travers, Willems Henri 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Gérard Pirès film:
L'Agression (1975)
Film Synopsis
Sagamore Noonan is the owner of a small farm in the southern United States, although his main
preoccupation is distilling whisky illegally, which he tries to keep
from the attention of the local sheriff. He lives with his
brother Doc Noonan, a ruined bookmaker, Billy, his eight-year old
nephew, and Noé, an eccentric uncle who is building a ship to
survive the end of the world. One day, a strange couple, Caroline
and her Uncle Simeon, turn up on the farm, looking for a place to stay
for a day or two. These two are in fact a pair of diamond
thieves, and their latest haul of jewels is concealed in Caroline's
bikini. It isn't long before the Noonan brothers have some more
unexpected guests, all eager to get their hands on Caroline's leisure
wear...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.