Pardon Mon Affaire (1976)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Although it has elements of the dubious morality that obtained in the seventies overall this is a gentle charmer from the screenplay by Jean- Loup Dabadie through the direction of Yves Robert through the ensemble acting led admirably by Jean Rochefort. I haven't seen the Hollywood remake so I am unable to compare and contrast, I have, however, seen sufficient Hollywood remakes of French comedies - including one actually written by the great Francis Veber, i.e. adapting his own French screenplay for Hollywood - to know they seldom, if ever, live up to the original let alone eclipse it. The plot has elements of The Seven Year Itch and Dabadie acknowledges this by having the fantasy object stand over an air vent which blows her dress up; the difference is that in The Seven Year Itch there was only one male lead (Tom Ewell) and the object of his fantasy (Marilyn Monroe) whereas here Jean Rochefort has three male buddies all experiencing female trouble. Overall a pleasant, entertaining soufflé.

A banal bureaucrat who works in a Paris ministry sees an engaging amazon in an amaranth dress;the man had a decent family life.On all sides,his friends are left by their wives because they were caught having affairs. Étienne Dorsay's wife,Marthe (the delicious Danièle Delorme),is an attractive and very straight woman;she warns her husband about the consequences of his being caught with another woman.But Étienne plans nonetheless to meet the mysterious beauty sub Rosa.Étienne sees the woman,Anny Duperey, on an ad poster,and finds how to meet her;then,he rides Anny Duperey down.Completely amoral,Dorsay's imbecility is equaled only by his selfishness.As such,the movie is cynical and illusion-less."Un elephant ..." is a long flash-back,as it starts with Dorsay's odd illumination on the roof,when he contemplates freely the prospective of stepping further into profligacy.It is the turning of an bureaucrat into a libertine;but Dorsay remains none the less an imbecile."Un elephant ..." has several subplots (Jean Rochefort's three womanizing and somehow stupid friends have their various misfires with their prosaic love affairs;Dorsay' s wife,Danièle Delorme,is harassed by a disagreeable teen-ager,and she sometimes looks as if she is close to ceding to him).A female colleague,Martine Sarcey, misapprehends his intentions. A word about the actors:Jean Rochefort brings some bonhomie and calmness,but also the crap poetry of the boorish clerks.Not a bit of respectability in his character; Jean Rochefort/Dorsay remains selfish and narrow-minded.The script is an almost bitter study in amorality,albeit that in a suave register,and it has the '70s frankness of keeping to sex only.These sex marauders,Jean Rochefort and his friends,have no charm,and the movie does not pretend that they have any.Around Dorsay,the sex escapades fail ,but "Un elephant ..." has a bizarre,fanciful and interesting ending.It is true that "Un elephant ..." does not reach the narrative ampleness that some sex-comedy of that era had,instead it is constructed as a series of gags,and as an open registration of sexual tribulations that ultimately denotes a certain "disabusement".Three gorgeous actresses (Anny Duperey,Danièle Delorme,Martine Sarcey).

Yves Robert's best works are those which deal with children :"la guerre des boutons" "la Gloire de mon Père" and its follow-up "le château de ma mère"."Un éléphant" is not as good as the three movies I mention above.But what connects it to his three wonderful films is that its four heroes have not really grown up.Claude Brasseur 's way of pitting the olives is a schoolboy 's joke!We can also credit Robert for introducing a gay character (Brasseur) while avoiding the usual clichés.Brasseur portrays a man like all the other ones.We'd never guess he is gay if we were not told it so.On the other hand,the female parts are not very interesting:Daniele Delorme -who was Robert's wife and her co-producer-was better in the fifties when she was directed by Duvivier and the attractive Duperrey is nothing but a mirage .And Guy Bedos 's mother is a calamity ,for Marthe Villalonga is ham-acting flesh on the bone.The movie was so successful that there was a sequel ("Nous irons tous au Paradis' ) and an American remake ("the woman in red")

This Yves Robert's film gave Gene Wilder the idea for a US remake ("The Woman in red"). But the latter doesn't have neither the freshness nor the simplicity of the French version.As a European, I feel myself better at ease with the Robert's movie because it is nearer to my culture -and the fact that actors and action are set in Paris make easier for me to understand the way characters think...It's doubtless a French comedy, with a perfect actor for this kind of work -Jean Rochefort, who portrays a typical French "bourgeois", awkward, shy and proud of his social position at the same time. A frustrated male of Latin culture...!Etienne (Rochefort) falls in love with a sexy woman he meets in his bureau. This woman is then chosen for an advertisement... He will do everything for conquering her, unless telling it his wife. The film is a joke about men erotically fantasies.The film is witty, charming and well written. Whereas Italian comedies play mostly with satire, strange comical faces and misunderstandings, French comedies are less caricature, they present "clownesques" situations in (appearently) more serious environments. Two excellent comical approaches! They're so different from American comical movies -in American comedies there's more mess, you laugh because situations are so incredible and full of contradictions.This film is worth to see, Jean Rochefort is funny even if he seems serious. When I saw the Gene Wilder movie I didn't enjoy so much -Wilder is an excellent actor, but his "Woman in red" had something quite artificial.. It was not as spontaneous like the original one. Wilder is better with his extravaganzas, with slapstick elements...