Am Rande der Nacht

Unique because it is the only crime movie made by Claude Berri; unique because this is also the only crime movie - and also maybe drama - in which Coluche played, who was a comedy actor ( on stage before going to the cinema industry) ; unique because it is one of the last crime film of the French industry before the arrival of Olivier Marchal, nearly twenty years later. But in the mean time, in 1997, you had LE COUSIN, made by Alain Corneau, and also J'IRAI AU PARADIS CAR L'ENFER EST ICI from Xavier Durringer. So, after the amazing LA BALANCE, TCHAO PANTIN is the French crime genre swan song before eighteen years; thanks to the TV industry with its silly crime detective series that diverted audiences from the theaters. And unique because it is a very gloomy, poignant and realistic crime movie, that grabs you to the guts, the blood, no one human can stay cold in front such a feature. No one. Philippe Leotard excellent in the ambiguous cop character, the cop using Coluche's character to get rid of the mobsters. And the most poignant thing is the untold link between Coluche's character, who lost in son a long time ago, and who begins to consider Richard Anconina's character as a kind of surrogate son. The audience guesses it, understands this, without the need to explain anything by useless dialogues. And maybe also Anconina looks at Coluche as a surrogate father. That's true story telling, and not bla bla bla.

Claude Berri is one of the great artists of family life in French cinema. I have enjoyed so many of his films about youth, courtship, marriage and fatherhood: Mazel Tov, Le cinéma de Papa, La première fois, Un moment d'égarement. The first half of Tchao Pantin works well in this framework, but the second half is just a routine revenge story.

I didn't really respond to the alcohol-blunted efforts of Coluche to rally himself to avenge the killing of Richard Anconina, nor did Agnès Soral's emotional about-face--deciding to help Coluche find the killer--seem believable. This actress has a very inexpressive face, and body to match. A tribute to Bruno Nuytten's wonderful cinematography is in order: there really is nobody like him for rainy night scenes. I'll give 10-10 for Coluche and Anconina, and zero for the rest.

Classic dark French psych thriller featuring Coluche, better known for his stand up comedy dressed in blue and white striped dungarees - Andy Pandy style. His acting as the sad middle aged loser Lambert should have earned him an Oscar.

Having lived in the area where the film is set, (and worked in an auto repair shop)the atmosphere and the photography are spot on. Very sad, complex and entertaining.

If you like this, watch Subway and Diva. The title derives from the area where the film is set - Pantin, a working class quarter in North Paris, and should be with first letter in caps.

Coluche's acting in "Tchao Pantin", or "So Long, Stooge" was so pivotal in the film's success that the title became a well-known trope defining a comedian's dramatic breakthrough. Coluche became an actor's school-case firmly establishing what his stand-up routines made attentive eyes suspect: he was more than a clown. And as pump attendant Lambert, he let his proletarian roots and street-smart humanity operate as naturally and poignantly as if he'd played these roles for twenty years. He was only 39 but could look ten years older with these eyes that always seem at loss and a heart that whatever used to drive it probably stopped to exist. What an irony for a man who literally 'fuel' people to be trapped in such a desperately static life.

Lambert is a total mystery but not in the way 'mystery' can be used to trick viewers, the directing of Claude Berri doesn't care for effects or twists, that's why saying the revelations that come near the end were predictable is missing the film's point. The story couldn't have been more linear and straightforward; whether it's a deliberate stylistic approach or not, Berri cares more for his characters who have all in common a sort of entrapment in a condition whose gravity isn't valued until violence raises its ugly head. It's a bit like staggering down the same disreputable and dangerous street every night to go home knowing that one night, you'll have pushed your luck one time too many. Nothing can come good from these dark and deserted streets sublimated by Bruno Nyutten's cinematography, as inky and shadowy as Gordon Willis' closed-doors shot in "The Godfather".

Indeed, in this masterpiece of sobriety, it's literally to the French hearts of darkness that we're plunged, in a journey that never surrenders to cheap emotions, you'll never see a tear running on Coluche's cheek or his brief friendship with Bensoussan starting with predictable antagonism, sometimes the best about human relationships is as hazardous as casual as the worst and maybe this is where the poignancy lies. Many things happen but we never take then for bad luck, they seem to be dictated by a Karma, a sort of immanent presence that decided the likes of Bensoussan, a small-time drug-trafficker, are the kind of natural outcasts who won't find their place no matter how hard they try. As the half-Arab, half-Jewish thug, Anconina gives one of his greatest performances, he's a man lacking the social skills because he obviously lacked something in his life, whatever it was, he found a parcel of it in Lambert's empathy.

Their interaction builds the whole first act and the dialogue is powerful without trying, when they talk, you can hear the hidden messages, the performances make you grasp the unspoken truths about their lives and it's so subtly done that you know the journey won't end with a happy ending. The rest of the cast involves a worn-down cop played by droopy-eyed Philippe Léotard and a punk prostitute played by Agnes Soral, needless to say that these characters aren't archetypes in the strictest sense of the word. Bensoussan sees Lola as the pretty blonde and the perfect trophy girlfriend, to bang and brag about it the day after, while Bauer first strikes as a little pebble in the shoe until he reveals, like Lola, more complexity. Society makes archetypes, not movies, and this is what "So Long, Stooge" is about, going into the depths of natural misfits in the crisis-stricken France of the early 80's.

Because "So Long, Stooge" is also a powerful time capsule of the dark and shady France, sung by Renaud or drawn by comic-book artist Frank Margerin, it's a universe made of black leather jackets, motorbikes and guns, without the romantic and rebellious spirit of the 50's, more of the disillusioned post-Oil crisis days we'd find in Kassovitz "Hatred". But even as a product of its era, the film resists the test of time because it's a vivid, lucid and poignant friendship story and an unforgettable descent into the soul of a man whose greatest revelation doesn't involve his past, but just the fact that, despite the shocking factor, he's just a nice guy. To a certain degree, Lambert is perhaps the closest French character to Travis Bickle and he's certainly not a pale copy, Coluche would win the French Oscar for his performance.

Sadly enough, he wouldn't have time to prove his value again as he'd die in a tragic motorbike accident in 1986, giving an eerie dimension to one of the most tragic moments in the film. Coluche like Bourvil didn't have time to be a late bloomer on the field of drama and left one of the most memorable performances of French cinema. And yes, it was so good "Tchao Pantin" isn't just used to describe the turning point of comedians but also their Holy Grail, their hidden desperation to be taken seriously at least once, Jean Dujardin, José Garcia or Franck Dubosc all wait for their "Tchao Pantin". Well, in 1983, Yannick Noah was the last French tennis player to win Roland Garros and Coluche the last comedian to have transitioned successfully to drama. Maybe today's cinema tends to overplay emotion, to emphasize the sleaziest aspects of the story such as gore and sex, while "So Long, Stooge" has its share of graphic moments, it's only in the peaceful and serene moments that we can measure what a tragic loss for cinema Coluche was.

And you can see in "So Long, Stooge" a rebirth of a grittier and more realistic form of filmmaking that had also one merit, to take Franch cinema out of that 'New Wave' rut and start to reflect its time and tell compelling stories that don't just rely on existential torments, but on actions, too, paving the way to the new generation: from Luc Besson to jean-Jacques Beineix. Definitely one of French cinema's most relevant movies.

Sometimes, the "magic" of cinema seems to take hold of us.

The two main characters are superb. So is cinematography. Everything is "in the dark, humid, without hope". Lanky Lola (1.78 m), while providing the inevitable love interest, is quite gelid and stolid, so her beauty (rain scene!, she awakening chez Lambert!) is not overtly "too much".

Bensoussan is a stupid kid, while Lambert... what a script! This should be required viewing for budding plot writers. He speaks seldomly, bluntly, seemingly without passion, world wearily, like a philosopher who decided to toss the world aside, as "a useless hypothesis". Gradually we get to know his intentions, which are not clear from the beginning (he's a master at deception :)!), but make sense afterwards. Unlike many Hollywood commercial thrillers, that try to be witty and only end up being preposterous. Or "revenge" films alla Stallone and Bronson, without any emotion because there's nothing to "balance" the killing spree.

This is a "cartesian" movie. "Clear and disc tint" ideas. If issued by a "gas station clerk", well, that's the master's disguise!

The Paris we witness is not the postcard's or Bardot's: everything is seedy, "the system" is rotten, like the copper Bauer's synthesis near the end: "There'll always be another one".

The ending is fine! Seldomly had I thought: "this should end right here", and it did.

IMDb reviewers agree on Bruno Nuytten (DP)'s work. Luckily enough, I hadn't read those reviews, and while watching even the first minutes I said: "what a good 'atmosphere'". That's a good work: noticeable even without "knowing it's something important".

Berri doing this shows a hidden potential. Pity he didn't do more of the genre! Maybe he "needed" all this "sun drenched Southern France" to make one "night" film...

I agree with IMDb reviewers like gregory-joulin about its two-part structure, and with Bob Taylor that probably the first part is the best. But I admit it: I felt more with the second. "Plot holes"? Many. But who won't remember the "murder by the small filling station" or the way he swiftly avoids Bauer's questioning. Unassuming, without hesitating, thus lethally. Just like what follows suit...

I liked his "method of interrogation": breaking the mobster's motorbike (not the man). And the way he answers to Bauer on why he was't working: (seeming concerned) "With all that happened, I had to take a few days off".

(About this film) Lambert would just quip: "Watch it".