Robert et Robert (1978)
Directed by Claude Lelouch

Film Review

For a filmmaker as prolific and eclectic as Claude Lelouch (to date he has made around sixty films, encompassing just about every genre you care to name) it is inevitable that you will come across a few of his films that will strike a chord and stay with you long after watching it.  Robert et Robert is my personal favourite, possibly the most humane and sensitive film that Lelouch put his name to, although this is owed as much to its two formidable lead actors - Charles Denner and Jacques Villeret - as to its director.  A typically Gallic take on the classic buddy movie, poignant and funny in equal measure, Robert et Robert is one of the few films that Lelouch made which is not spoiled by his artistic excesses or his inability to construct a coherent narrative.  It's not a profound or original film, but it engages the emotions and rewards in a way that, for a reasonably demanding filmgoer at least, Lelouch's films very rarely do.

In common with the director's better films, Robert et Robert has a mischievous satirical side to it.  Here, Lelouch has in his sights one of the most reviled fads of the 1970s - the matrimonial agency or marriage agency (a precursor to today's equally dubious internet dating sites).  A suitably oleaginous Jean-Claude Brialy makes a brilliant and all-too-recognisable caricature of the suspicious individuals running these mostly fraudulent agencies, extorting money from vulnerable and insecure loners by promising them the perfect soul mate selected for them by the latest in computer technology.  (The earlier British film comedy Carry On Loving (1970) took the mickey-taking one or two steps further, making the scam even more blatant.)  Brialy cuts such a ridiculous figure (at one point he tries to present the Battle of Waterloo as a great military victory - for the French) that even one of his most timid clients - played by Jacques Villeret - cannot resist sending him up.

Robert et Robert provided a significant boost to Villeret's career (it won him the first of his two Césars in 1979).  Prior to this he had cropped up in minor roles in two of Lelouch's films (Le Bon et les méchants and Si c'était à refaire), and would go on to appear in many more, before becoming one of the most popular French actors of his generation.  The living embodiment of Chaplin's assertion that comedy is tragedy seen in long-shot, Villeret has no difficulty making us laugh (the introductory shot of him trying to direct traffic is a classic, as is his spot-on impersonation of an Ingmar Bergman film), but he never lets us lose sight of the unhappiness and insecurities that make him a naturally tragic figure.  In this, he is mirrored - brilliantly so - by a completely contrasting personality, Charles Denner.  Now famous for his lead portrayal in Truffaut's L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977), Denner is Villeret's abrasive, less amiable alter-ego, but the two men complement each other so well that you can hardly imagine them ever working apart.

The friendship that develops between the two titular Roberts, and the way in which this friendship assists their maturation, is perhaps the most sincere and touching thing that Claude Lelouch ever brought to the screen.  And who cares if Denner's extravagant flight of fancy (which sees Villeret - somewhat prophetically - becoming a comedy giant and national treasure) turns out to be no more than moonshine?  At least the spindly hawk-nosed Robert and his chubby namesake will have found a way out of their retarded adolescence and completed their metamorphosis into confident adult human beings.  Friendship is a beautiful thing in its own right but it can be a great catalyst for change - such is the moral of Lelouch's most engaging and most satisfying film.

Film Synopsis

Jacques Millet is the director of a marriage agency and prides himself on always being able to match the right man to the right woman, with the aid of his expensive, state-of-the-art computer.  He has his work cut out with two of his latest clients, who both happened to be named Robert.  These two unpromising individuals would doubtless be consigned to bachelorhood for the rest of their lives were it not for Millet's persistence and skill at matchmaking.  Robert Goldman is the least sympathetic of the two, a grouchy, misanthropic Jewish taxi driver in his late forties who still lives with his mother.  Robert Villiers also lives with his mother, and although he is chronically shy and completely lacking in self-confidence, he at least has something approximating to a sympathetic personality.

After visiting Millet's agency, Goldman offers Villiers a lift in his taxi (and naturally charges him for this favour, although he doesn't force him to pay for the coffee he foists on him).  It is the beginning of a new friendship which helps both men to emerge from their respective cocoons.  Villers begins working as a taxi driver for his new friend and gradually he gains a modicum of self-esteem, whilst Goldman starts to appreciate the company of other people.  Robert and Robert may not have found love, but they have surely found something better - a sense of their own worth.  An outing to Waterloo concludes with two of Millet's clients announcing their decision to get married.  At the wedding reception, Villiers finds he has the gift of making others laugh.  Goldman at once sees an opportunity to make them both rich...