In the landscape of French cinema, Jean Poiret was a crucial figure because he displayed admirable skills in various domains of the Seventh Art. He formed a successful comical duo with actor Michel Serrault, he wrote plays that remained in many memories like la Cage aux Folles and as an actor, he sometimes gave unforgettable performances like irrepleacable Inspector Lavardin in Claude Chabrol's universe. With le Zèbre (1992), being in the shoes of a filmmaker was the last mountain left to climb for him. Taken from a novel by Alexandre Jardin and given that the main actress, Caroline Cellier was his beloved wife in real life, his first and sadly last feature length movie was tailor-made for him. Thus, Poiret turned a banal reading into a personal work dedicated to his muse.
At first sight, le Zèbre looks like many mundane French comedies but Jean Poiret accumulated enough savoir-faire throughout his career to bestow his work with a singular whiff and the result works for all the better. It may be a a somewhat unassuming comedy, there's even room for detective genre with twists to maintain the interest even at the tail end when you think everything is resolved. In spite of false ways and mysteries, you quickly guess that Hippolyte's responsible for all these clues and he has good personal reasons to act his own way: he doesn't want his love life to fall in a humdrum one and tries to make it spicy in any way possible. This valuable goal gives way to delightful, zany comical sequences in which Poiret effectively directs his actors to avoid overracting.
But as the comedy progresses, its tone also gradually changes. If the first half is anchored in the kingdom of comedy, then the second part borders on the edges of drama with a wistful vibe without necessarily losing the half-tender, half caustic side from which the movie takes its strengths. It's obvious that far beyond the laughter and through his eccentric main character, the filmmaker conceived his movie as an ode to his wife but he also put forward his own doubts and anxieties about their relationship and fortunately, this change of perspective remains very convincing. And when you know that Poiret died shortly after finishing shooting his work, emotion easily comes in the end.
To quote a song from Belle & Sebastian, "it could have been a brillant career". It? Poiret's ride as a filmmaker for le Zèbre was a fullfilling success and given his fate, one can only ponder this question: where Poiret would have gone next afterwards?
