l-soubeyran

The parallel between the story of "What?" and "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll is very interesting, and maybe this film is the most precise adaptation of Caroll's crazy story, precisely because it really shows all the sexual content of Alice's dream trip. The movie construction reminds the "passage" of Alice "behind the mirror": she escapes the cruel world (the rapists) when she goes down to the "loonies house". Mastroianni's pimp character reminds of the Mad Hatter, because he keeps asking Sydne Rome if she wants to have tea with him around five o'clock. Polanski's character can also be seen as the Mad Hatter sidekick in the book: he keeps fighting with Mastroianni all day long, as if it was some kind of game between them. Polanski is very funny as a nervous "little guy" with a splendid mustache! At the same time he was shooting "What?" in Italy, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot "Flesh for Dracula" nearby, and that explains Polanski's apparition with mustache in a scene of this film. Of course, the "sexual innocence" of Sydne Rome put the film on the rank of "erotic fantasy". The tribute to "Alice" is clear, but it seems that the film may have influenced a great Italian erotic illustrator, Milo Manara, whose sexy heroins really look like Sydne Rome, and are often place in similarly "unvolontary" sexual situations (oooh, the pooor girl lost her clothes, what a shame!). Anyway, this is a crazy absurd funny and sexy film, that never takes itself seriously (at the end, Rome yells to Mastroianni: "Don't worry, this is only a film!")with a very colorful and "sunny" atmosphere.

It's sad to see that such a film has been widely mistaken with a "non funny comedy" in France and elsewhere. Timsit maybe managed to make the first french comedy in a "ZAZ" style, which is very unusual in french cinema. Gags in the back of the scene, stupid dialogues told by very serious actors... does it remind you of something? Richard Berry as Frollo reminds me a lot of the way Leslie Nielson plays his characters in "Airplane" or "The Naked Gun": deadly serious and absurd at the same time! I think that the film loses a lot of its impact when dubbed in English or subtitled, principally because the dialogue is full of french slang. The screenplay is very close to the original novel by Victor Hugo, and it's surprising that a pure comedy may be the best adaptation of the "real" story of the Hunchback. I think that this movie will stay in the hearts of french ZAZ and Saturday Night Live fans as one of the first examples of a "french American humor mix".