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Coup de Torchon - Criterion CollectionRating:
Release Date: 13 March, 2001 Retail Price: $29.95 OUR Price: $26.99 You SAVE: $2.96! Cast: Complete Cast (6 total) |
Coup de Torchon - Criterion Collection Reviews
Failed product from France
This is a typical strange film from French director Bertrand Tavernier, with Isabelle Huppert as female star. It happens in French West Africa. You have the black natives and the white French, as the 2 opposite races that play a big part in the story. You have also the bad guys, vicious, racist, stupid, against the main character, to whom everything is related.
There is a transformation in this character along the film. And this transformation seems to be the "story" of the film. What this transformation means, how it comes to happen, what is going on exactly, I don't know. You may take a guess if you see this film. But as for me, I didn't care, because even a boring and uninteresting film I can take it, but not when it is narrated in this unoriginal and coarse way.
I have to say that I like most of the French cinema, so apparently boring and lack-of-action films don't mean bad to me. But this one is just not nice to look at. I couldn't figure out what the whole thing was about (and if it was about what I just said, then it's not worth it). I can't get to like any of the characters. I film with no hero, not even somebody to like!
The only thing I liked was the outdoors scenery, and the photography was nice.
This director is no good.
A Magnificent, Murderous Black Comedy With Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert
Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) is the overweight, lazy, unshaven chief of police in Bourkassa, Senegal. It's 1938, and this French colony is a backwater of dust, flies and dysentery. Cordier can't talk his wife, Huguette (Stephane Audran), into sharing his bed, but she is very solicitous of her "brother" who lives with them. He takes bribes from two pimps who humiliate him in public. He's the butt of jokes among his superiors. He has hot eyes for Rose Marcaillou (Isabelle Huppert), who is a sexy young woman with a brute of a husband. Cordier willingly puts off doing almost anything, including making arrests. He's a man easy to get impatient with and easy to push around. "You never arrest anybody," the local priest tells him one day. "You've got to show folks you're brave, honest and hard working." "I can't," Cordier says. "Why not?" "Because I'm not brave, honest and hardworking." One night, after making the two pimps sing a bawdy song on the banks of the river, he shoots both of them and pushes their bodies into the current.
Coup de Torchon is a black comedy so dark you'll need to look carefully; so elegant you'll smile at Cordier's planning and improvisations; so clever you may consider a few murders of your own. The dialogue is sharp and amusing. The background score is an energetic mix of Thirties popular themes. The end of the movie is a sort of sour, bittersweet mixture that leaves an interesting taste in the mouth.
Cordier decides to get rid of Rose's husband, which he does with a shotgun blast. As the man lies dying, Cordier walks over and kicks him hard several times. "I know kicking a dead man isn't very nice," Cordier tells Marcaillou, kicking him again, "but first, I wanted to and second, there's no risk involved." Later, after enjoying the enthusiastic delights of Rose, she tells him, "Having you is an honor...a man who's killed my husband for love." "I was just getting rid of trash," Cordier replies. "The trash also happened to be your husband, so I killed two birds with one stone."
No one in the dusty backwater of Bourkassa would ever think Cordier guilty of being a murderer, much less a serial murderer. He manages to take care of a few more and gradually sees himself as a sort of cleanser of humanity. "I just help to reveal (people's) true nature. It's a dirty job, Rose," he tells his lover, "and you might very well say I deserve all the dirty pleasure I get out of it."
We leave Cordier by himself, still the police chief of Bourkassa, on the brink of WWII. He looks at people with sad eyes. "I'm a policeman...I'm Jesus Christ in person, sent here with a load of crosses bigger than the next. I try to save the innocent, but there aren't any."
Philippe Noiret, one of the world's great actors, is superb as Cordier. In his career he has played peasants and princes, fools and wise men. He has never been better here. Isabelle Huppert was 28 when she made this movie, and looks 18. She is willful, sly, funny and sexy. The Criterion DVD picture and audio are in great shape. Extras include an interview with Bertrand Tavernier as well as an alternate ending, truly strange, which was filmed but not used.
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