Film Review
After a pretty lacklustre decade, Jean-Pierre Mocky scored a palpable
hit with this ribald comedy which goes after those who profit from the
credulity of others with the savagery of a half-starved
Rottweiler.
Le Miraculé
has a bad reputation in some quarters, as it is perceived as a direct
attack on religious faith in general, Catholicism in particular.
In the face of such criticism, Mocky went out of his way to make clear
this was not his intention. Like his earlier film,
Un drôle de paroissien
(1963),
Le Miraculé
condemns not believers, but those who exploit believers for their own
cynical ends. The film begins with a pretty sour reminder of what
Lourdes has become, a hideously kitsch Catholic theme park where
mass-produced effigies of the Virgin Mary are piled high on every
neon-lit street amid all manner of related paraphernalia waiting for a
devout Catholic with a large purse and dearth of good
taste. Jessica Hausner's
Lourdes
(2009) makes the same grim observation, albeit far more subtly.
In common with all too much of Mocky's output,
Le Miraculé is a lively but
extremely uneven film, tending painfully to vulgarity in places whilst
being outrageously funny in others. On the plus
side, the film boasts a superb cast, with Michel Serrault and Jean
Poiret teaming up one last time, bringing to an end their partnership
which began in the early 1950s. In what is effectively a silent
role (as he plays a Harpo Marx-style mute who can only communicate by
whistling and making weird farmyard noises) Serrault turns in one of
the funniest performances of his career, showing that in addition to
his other accomplishments he was also a superlative visual
comedian. It is interesting to note that the roles taken by
Poiret and Serrault had originally been conceived for Michel Blanc and
Coluche; the latter had agreed to appear in the film shortly before he
died in a road accident in 1986.
Jeanne Moreau gives just as much value as her male co-stars in a rare
comedic role,
gleefully sending up the kind of perverse and conflicted femme fatale roles she has
played in the past, earning herself a well-deserved Best Actress César
nomination as she does so. Among the more inspired gags is one in which
Moreau enters a 'state of the art' confessional booth (effectively a
payphone to the Almighty, complete with recorded message) and gets cut
off in mid confession when her allotted three minutes are up. What
the film's three hugely talented leads (ably supported by an admirable
supporting cast) do to Mocky's rambling screenplay is itself something
of a minor miracle, a kind of Lazarus resurrection that breathes life
into a project that could so easily have been a stillborn disaster,
strangled at its inception by its own chaotic silliness. The
sheer abundance of enjoyably daft comic situations, enthusiastically
handled by a committed cast, provides a convenient distraction from the
vacuous comic-book plot, and whilst the director's penchant for tacky
vulgarity diminishes the film's comic potential,
Le Miraculé still manages to
be one of Jean-Pierre Mocky's more consistently enjoyable films.
Ever the
agent provocateur,
Mocky chose to release the film on 18th February, the date on which the
Virgin Mary is reputed to have presented herself to Saint Bernadette...
© James Travers 2013
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Next Jean-Pierre Mocky film:
Ville à vendre (1992)
Film Synopsis
Papu, an unscrupulous peddler, is selling balloons one evening when he
is run over by a car. Pretending he has lost the use of his legs,
he hopes to profit from an insurance claim, but he has no desire to
remain a pretend invalid for the rest of his life. With the help
of Sabine, a former prostitute who has become an obsessive Catholic and
charity worker, he will undertake a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where he
will make a miraculous recovery. When insurance agent Plombie
uncovers this scam, he sends his mute colleague Roland Fox-Terrier
after Papu, with the aim of exposing Papu before the supposed miracle
can take place...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.