La Chèvre

I spent a fun evening at the movies watching the 1981 comedy 'La Chevre' written and directed by Francis Veber and starring Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu. It's quite interesting to see the two French actors at a moment when the paths of their careers were crossing. By the time this film was made Pierre Richard was an established comedian with a few big hits in his records, while (the thinner than today) Depardieu was an ascending young actor but his great roles were still a few years ahead. It was the first out of three films the two actors made together. When the third was made, Depardieu's fame and prestige exceeded by far the one of his partner.

The story of the film is ridiculous by design, and I need to point to one rare moments of disagreement with the opinion of my idol in cinema critic, Roger Ebert who gave just 1.5 stars out of 4 to the film. The pretext of story is meant to be stupid, it's part of the comic design of the script. It goes like this. The daughter of a rich French businessman - beautiful but unlucky in all she does - is kidnapped in Mexico. When all classical means to find her fail, the solution is thought to pair the detective (Depardieu) with a distraught accountant in the businessman's company (Rchard) who is as unlucky and as much a walking catastrophe as the vanished girl. The two are sent to Mexico in the hope that the chains of bad luck will lead to the same place where the girl is being held.

Bad luck and in-adaptation to the the real world are sources of comedy since Laurel and Hardy. Francis Veber brings the genre close to perfection. The Richard - Depardieu couple works perfectly. While Richard is the master of the physical gags, Depardieu complements him and provides the amplifying counterpoint with his annoyed stares and exasperated eyebrows moves. One deploys a lot of energy, the other takes a minimalist approach. The result is explosive. Watching this film is far from being only an exercise in nostalgia, it's the guarantee of a good time spent on really fun comedy.

One more thing - the film is one of the more than 250(!) films that benefit from the music composed by Vladimir Cosma . The score is wonderful.

And a question. I could not figure out or find information about the significance of the title. What does 'Le chevre' ('The Goat') means. It must be some French slang that escapes me. Or something else. Any hint will be appreciated.

This was only Veber's second film as a double-threat (writer-director) and the first to employ the inspired casting of Gerard Depardieu and Pierre Richard. Its recent re-release on DVD to celebrate its 20th anniversary should make it accessible to a whole new generation too young to have caught it first time around. One only has to read the comments - almost exclusively raves - to guage the quality and I can only add one more voice, slightly hoarse from so much laughter in support. The concept is simplicity itself; take one accident-prone girl and because her father is an industrialist, ergo wealthy, let her predilection for bad luck result in her playing into the hands of kidnappers THEN, instead of hiring a team of SAS/mercenaries to track her down hire just One private investigator and supply him with a human bloodhound in the form of as big a dork as the missing girl. Pierre Richard breathes life into a dork who doesn't wait for a banana skin to trip on, he brings his own. Team him up with a pragmatic Gerard Depardieu who refuses to give house room to the concept of bad luck and just stand back and let them get on with it. The Mexican setting is largely irrelevant, it could just as well have been set in Marseilles but laffs are laffs wherever they occur. The ending is particularly effective - it's always something of a problem to end a story like this - as the two Dorks fall in love as expected but then Veber rounds it off with one last neat and very apposite visual gag. Not to be missed. 10/10

These two actors are great together, and their three films are all funny (La Chevre, Les Comperes, Les Fugitifs), but this one is the best because of its concept that it will take an unlucky detective to find the missing unlucky girl. But he is more than unlucky; he is also a deluded jerk (though not a mean one)who doesn't even know he is unlucky. His partner, a very competent realist (and perfect straight man) has to rescue him time after time to follow his unlucky course toward the girl. Great French humor.

Although the video box described the pairing in this movie as reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy, I think this is greatly overstating things. However, it is still a very good movie and worth your time.

The story concerns the abduction of a VERY unlucky girl and the investigation into her disappearance. Gérard Depardieu is a competent kick-butt detective that is unable to find her after searching 42 days. Then a psychologist suggests to her rich father that they are going about searching in the wrong way--to find such an unlucky girl they should use a man equally as unlucky as they are bound to be drawn to each other! Silly as it may seem, this strategy seems to have something going for it, but Depardieu feels quite miffed that this boob, Pierre Richard, keeps blindly stumbling into important clues.

While this is not the funniest movie, it certainly does offer quite a few laughs. When I find myself laughing out loud, I know it must be a pretty good comedy!

FYI--I probably SHOULD take off another point from the score, as the movie had two stupid moments: in the jungle in Mexico, our heroes encounter a gorilla AND a cobra--this isn't even the right continent for either!!

The film seems to me to be the best comedy ever. Both Richard and Depardieu are wonderful. The film abounds in comic situations, but the dialogue is even better - lively, volatile, "French". It is both a comedy of situations and a comedy of words. This film is like a Mont Blanc among comedies. It's a pity that few people bother to vote for it. In Russia a generation grew up laughing at the characters of Richard, and this generation was far from being the worst. His films are pure joy.