Le Dîner de cons
France 1998
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Pierre Brochant, a successful publisher, is one of a group of friends who organise an "idiots' dinner" every Wednesday. Each member has to invite an idiot as his guest; whoever brings the biggest idiot wins. Pierre's latest unwitting victim is François Pignon, a finance Ministry accountant. Playing golf, Pierre ricks his back. When François shows up at his apartment for a pre-dinner drink, Pierre tells him they must miss the dinner. Attempting to help, François makes the injury worse.
Pierre's wife Christine, who earlier walked out in disgust over the idiots' dinner, phones to say she's leaving him. Full of sympathy, François insists on sticking around and tries to phone Pierre's doctor. By mistake he contacts Pierre's ex-mistress, Marlène; to Pierre's horror, Marlène announces she's coming round. Suspecting Christine may be with her ex-husband, his former friend Leblanc, Pierre gets François to phone him on a pretext, but Leblanc sees through the ruse and selflessly comes round to help.
Sent to head Marlène off, François encounters Christine, who has had a change of heart. Taking her for Marlène, he gives the game away. She storms off. Dismayed, Pierre concludes she's gone to Meneaux, a notorious womaniser. François contacts his tax-inspector colleague Cheval who's investigating Meneaux, and who reluctantly brings round the dossier revealing the whereabouts of Meneaux's love-nest. But Meneaux, when phoned, proves to be occupied with another woman altogether. Cheval leaves, threatening to investigate Pierre's finances.
News comes that Christine has been in a car crash; she's injured, but refuses to see Pierre. From Marlène, François learns the truth about his dinner invitation. Though deeply hurt, he phones Christine and persuades her how much Pierre needs her. Pierre, remorseful, is overcome with gratitude. But at the last moment François screws up again.
Review
Francis Veber, one of France's most successful writer-directors, forms part of that long tradition of vernacular French comedy that has never quite made it across the English Channel; earlier outcroppings include Louis de Funès vehicles and the films of Philippe de Broca. In Britain, such movies fall between two stools: the audience for French films tends to go for the subtler humour of Eric Rohmer, while lovers of energetic farce mostly won't wear subtitles. Veber probably remains best known over here for the 1973 L'Emmerdeur (poorly remade by Billy Wilder in 1981 as Buddy, Buddy), which he scripted from his own stage play for Edouard Molinaro.
In L'Emmerdeur the plans of Lino Ventura's taciturn hitman were constantly disrupted by a well-meaning dolt played by Jacques Brel. Le Dîner de cons, adapted by Veber from another of his stage hits, replays much the same relationship, with Thierry Lhermitte's supercilious publisher having his well-ordered life dismantled by the disastrously eager-to-please Jacques Villeret. (The characters played by Brel and Villeret in the films even share the same surname, Pignon.)
The key dynamic in this kind of comic pairing isn't the gravitation of the idiot to the straight guy, which is understandable enough, but the reverse: the fatal delusion on the part of a logical individual, operating on cool self-interest, that even the most unpromising human material can, with a little coaching, be co-opted into the same well-ordered system. Rather than recognising Pignon as a walking disaster area, to be shot of as rapidly as possible, Brochant treats him as a challenge to be overcome - a dire miscalculation.
As Brochant, Thierry Lhermitte's chiselled good looks and incredulous blue-eyed stare make him the ideal foil, and Daniel Prévost contributes a pungent cameo (crowned with the best left-field gag in the movie) as a predatory tax inspector. But the film is stolen, as it must be if it's to work, by Villeret as Pignon. With his balding, spherical head, bug eyes and pudgy little mouth, Villeret seems like a cross between a giant baby and a less aggressive Zero Mostel. His comic persona also shares something of a baby's abrupt, discontinuous mood swings, and in the film's funniest moments the camera focuses delightedly on his mobile moon-face as it slumps from inane self-satisfaction to lip-quivering dismay.
Le Dîner de cons clocked up over 900 performances on the Paris stage before being filmed, so not surprisingly the pacing and mechanics of the comedy run with dovetailed precision. The only queasy moment comes towards the end, when Veber turns briefly sanctimonious and tries to make us, in the person of our surrogate Brochant, feel guilty for having treated Pignon as an idiot. Since the plot's entire comic raison d'être, up to this point, has lain in doing just that, this attempt to claim the moral high ground seems rather less than justified.
That apart, Veber's film offers all the undemanding, solidly old-fashioned pleasures of a traditionally well-crafted French farce. Old-fashioned enough, at times, to be positively nostalgic: how many British films these days would dare to depict football fans as trivia-obsessed buffoons?
Credits
- Producer
- Alain Poiré
- Screenplay
- Francis Weber
- Director of Photography
- Luciano Tovoli
- Editor
- Georges Klotz
- Art Director
- Hugues Tissandier
- Music
- Vladimir Cosma
- ©Gaumont/Efve/TF1 Films Production
- Production Companies
- A Gaumont/Efve/TF1 Films Production co-production with the participation of TPS Cinéma
- Production Co-ordinators
- Roger Pera
- Françoise Della Libera
- Production Managers
- Philippe Desmoulins
- Henri Brichetti
- Unit Production Manager
- Pierre D'Hoffelize
- Unit Manager
- Yann Arnaud-Le Gall
- Location Manager
- Jean-Pierre Nossereau
- Assistant Directors
- Bernard Seitz
- Christophe Gachet
- Laurent Petrelli
- Noura Lauzier
- Valerie Novel
- Hervé Hillien
- Script Supervisor
- Laurence Lemaire
- Casting
- Françoise Menidrey
- Camera Operator
- Yves Agostini
- Special Effects
- Jean-Louis Trinquier
- Animator
- Christophe Vallaux
- Set Decorator
- Alain Pitrel
- Costume Designer
- Jacqueline Bouchard
- Make-up
- Gill Robillard
- Hair
- Agathe Dupuis
- Titles
- Daniel Marchetti
- Guitar Soloists
- Philippe Catherine
- Romane
Music Production- Sarabande
- Pierre-Richard Muller
- Music Consultant
- Edouard Dubois
- Soundtrack
- "Le temps ne fait rien à l'affaire" by/performed by Georges Brassens
- Production Sound
- Bernard Bats
- Re-recording Mixers
- François Groult
- Bruno Tarrière
- Sound Editor
- Jean Gargonne
- Sound Effects
- Pascal Chauvin
- Post-synchronization
- Gilbert Crozet
- Cast
- Jacques Villeret
- François Pignon
- Thierry Lhermitte
- Pierre Brochant
- Francis Huster
- Leblanc
- Alexandra Vandernoot
- Christine
- Daniel Prévost
- Cheval
- Catherine Frot
- Marlène
- Edgar Givry
- Cordier
- Christian Pereira
- Sorbier
- Pétronille Moss
- Mlle Blond
- Daniel Martin
- Messignac
- Elvire Mellière
- Gisèle
- Philippe Brigaud
- Tanner
- Michel Caccia
- Laurent Gendron
- Candide Sanchez
- guests
- Benoît Bellal
- Mykhaël Georges-Schar
- Jacques Bleu
- hosts
- Pierre-Arnaud Juin
- Boissonade
- Rémy Roubakha
- Carlier
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Pathé Distribution
- 7,191 feet
- 79 minutes 54 seconds
- Dolby digital
- In Colour
- Subtitles