Film Review
After the ordeal of making
Les Seins de glace (1974),
director Georges Lautner was badly in need of some light relief, and
this might explain why his next film,
Pas
de problème!, is one of his liveliest and most erratic
comedies. Looking like an improvised road movie treatment of
Hitchcock's
The Trouble with Harry (1955),
this is far from being Lautner's greatest film but it is among his most
entertaining, its main attraction being the odd but brilliant
assortment of comedy performers that it throws into its ramshackle
plot, like rabbits into a threshing machine. Lautner co-scripted
the film with Jean-Marie Poiré (the son of his producer Alain
Poiré), who would later become phenomenally successful as a
director with his zany comedies
Papy fait de la résistance
(1983) and
Les Visiteurs (1993). Poiré's idea
of humour is far more demotic and uninhibited than Lautner's and often
gives way to silliness that is not apparent in the director's earlier
films. Whilst Lautner has fun directing some ludicrously
over-the-top action scenes, such as the mad car chase that starts off
the film and has the word
self-indulgence
stamped all over it, his screenwriter amuses himself with the kind of
lowbrow comedy chicanery that would become his watchword.
Café-théâtre diva Miou-Miou is stunning in her
leading film role, having recently distinguished herself in a
supporting role in Jean Chapot's
Les Granges brûlées
(1973). Apart from her visual impact, she has little to do in the
film other than look suitably girly and feeble, leaving it to her male
co-stars Bernard Menez and Henri Guybet (who later appear even more
girly and feeble) to dig her out of the hole that the fates (or rather
some unnamed hoodlums) have thrown her into. Menez's casting as
the stammering, inept loser is hardly surprising (it's about the only
role he was ever cast in) but he makes an effective bedfellow to the
smug Guybet, and who else could convincingly play the son of Jean
Lefebvre? One of the most familiar faces to devotees of French
film comedy, Lefebvre is on top form, for once playing a stern paternal
figure instead of the usual sympathetic loser he is best known
for.
Lautner's glamorous mum Renée Saint-Cyr shows up in a short but
memorable sequence late in the film, and Miou-Miou's partner at the
time, Patrick Dewaere, puts in a cameo appearance. Another
café-théâtre star, Gérard Jugnot, is also
roped in briefly, mercilessly ripping the carpet from under Menez's
feet as he does so. Anny Duperey, female sensuality personified,
has no end of fun playing Lefebvre's neglected mistress, although it is
Lefebvre himself who gets the weirdest comedy digression when he picks
up a gorgeous hitchhiker named Emmanuelle, with fairly predictable
results. Whereas many of Lautner's later comedies struggle to
keep going much beyond the mid-point,
Pas
de problème! never shows any sign of running out of
steam, and even if the plot doesn't seem to have any idea where it's
heading the jokes just keep coming - non-stop amusement all the
way. Enjoy the neat little homage to
L'Auberge
rouge (1951).
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Georges Lautner film:
On aura tout vu (1976)
Film Synopsis
Riddled with bullet wounds, the victim of a vendetta manages to drag
himself to the door of Anita Boucher where he begs for shelter.
The man then collapses, killed by his injuries. Anita has already
had her fill of the judicial system - she has just been released from
prison - and so has no intention of notifying the police of what has
just taken place. Instead, she persuades Jean-Pierre Michalon, a
man who chats her up in a nightclub, to help her get rid of the
body. Thanks to Jean-Pierre's quick thinking, the dead man is
soon in the boot of the car belonging to his father, a
businessman. It is a temporary solution but the plan goes
horribly awry when Jean-Pierre's father drives off in his car sooner
than expected, for an assignation with his mistress, Janice. On
the way, he picks up a an attractive hitch-hiker...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.