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
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011