Film Review
For his fourth and final collaboration with writer-director Francis Veber,
comedy icon Pierre Richard teams up once more with Gérard Depardieu,
reforming a double act that had already notched up two box office hits -
La Chèvre (1981) and
Les Compères (1983).
The film's popularity in France (it drew an audience of 4.5 million) led
Veber to script and direct an American remake
Three Fugitives (1989),
starring Nick Nolte and Martin Short. Whilst the latter film is massively
inferior to the original, it proved to be an even greater success, grossing
over 40 million dollars. Depardieu would work with Veber on two subsequent
films -
Le Placard (2001) and
Tais-toi! (2002).
Francis Veber was the man who established the buddy movie concept as a mainstay of
French comedy in 1973 with his early hit
L'Emmerdeur,
which offered us the unlikely pairing of Lino Ventura and Jacques Brel.
Many of his subsequent films employed the same 'odd couple' concept, none
more effectively than his sparky Richard-Depardieu offerings.
Les
Fugitifs repeats the central premise of
La Chèvre and
Les
Compères, with the accident prone but good-natured Richard taming
the Depardieu brute as the two become locked in a relationship of inescapable
mutual dependency. Here, the thing that binds them together is a cute
little girl - Richard's mute daughter - who succeeds in awakening Depardieu's
long buried compassion and need for affection.
The film does tend to get a little schmaltzy in places and it is painfully
clear throughout that Veber's forte is comedy, not human psychology.
With a lesser actor than Depardieu
Les Fugitifs would have been totally
spoiled by its author's clumsy excursions into sentimentality, but fortunately
the great thesp is on hand to salvage Veber's awkwardly saccharine dialogue
and invest it with genuine feeling. The film doesn't quite manage to
make up for its recurring bouts of gratuitous mawkishness, but there are
a few scenes (notably the one where Depardieu visits Richard's little girl
in a home for state fostered children) that genuinely do stir the heart strings.
Les Fugitifs may not hit all the right emotional notes but it still
manages to be an entertaining romp, one that makes the most of the priceless
rapport of its equally talented lead performers. Although Richard's
star was by this time in the descendent, with Depardieu now proving to be
the main box office draw, the two actors are supremely well-matched and function
as possibly the best comedy double act that French cinema has given us.
The sequence in which Richard has to pose as Depardieu's wife, with a
wig that resolutely refuses to behave itself, is pure comedy gold, as are
earlier scenes in which Richard ham-fistedly tries to hold up a bank and
walks into a lamppost (twice). Two other notable performers, Jean Carmet
and Michel Blanc, show up fleetingly to lob in a few more comedy grenades.
Veber's well-meaning but pretty inept attempts to make this a more serious
kind of comedy - including elements that would be much more at home in a hard-boiled
action thriller of the time - rebound and diminish the film's comic impact
greatly, although this is a minor sin compared with the author's inability
to offer genuine emotional feeling in place of treacly sentimentality.
Thankfully, what could so easily have been a comedy disaster is amply
redeemed by its two incomparable lead performers.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Francis Veber film:
Le Jaguar (1996)
Film Synopsis
A series of bank robberies has earned Jean Lucas a five year stretch in prison.
Once his term of incarceration is over, he vows to turn over a new leaf and
become an honest man, a resolution which his old enemy police superintendent
Duroc doubts he will stick to for long. After selling the only valuable
items in his possession - a few jewels - Lucas heads for the nearest bank
to cash his cheque and immediately walks into his worst nightmare.
François Pignon, one of life's natural born losers, has chosen this
particular moment to hold up the bank, to obtain the money he desperately
needs to prevent the social services from taking his infant daughter Jeanne
into care. Believing that Lucas is the culprit, the police turn up
in force, and Pignon's only recourse is to take the former professional bank
robber hostage in his escape.
In their desperate bid for freedom, Pignon accidentally shoots Lucas in the
leg. To make amends, he takes the wounded man to a veterinarian friend,
Dr Martin, who manages to remove the bullet. During his recovery, Lucas
gets to meet Pignon's daughter and develops a kindly interest in her, moved
by the fact that she hasn't uttered a single word since the death of her
mother a few years ago. Despite his justified antagonism towards Pignon,
Lucas agrees to help him obtain the forged documents he needs to make his
escape across the border into Italy. In return, Pignon will write a
signed confession exculpating Lucas for the bank robbery. Their plans
are soon put in jeopardy when Jeanne is taken into custody by social services.
Only with Lucas's help will her father have any chance of being reunited
with his daughter...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.