Philippe Noiret is my favorite French actor, and
one of the great serio/comic actors of all time,
on a par with Sir Ralph Richardson, Walter Matthau,
and Marcello Mastroianni. He has had a 50-year
film career, working for many great directors,
including Tavernier, Hitchcock, De Broca, Malle,
Berri, Chabrol, Cukor and Monicelli. My favorite
was LA GRANDE BOUFFE made in 1975 by Marco Ferreri,
and the scandal of Cannes that year! It stars
Noiret, Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, and Ugo Tognazzi
(The “husband” in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES)
– all great comedians – in a tale
of four louche and depressed middle-aged men who,
with the help of some friendly girlfriends and
hookers, literally eat themselves to death! A
must rental if you have never seen it!
In LES COTELETTES (Viewed in competition at the
Cannes Film Festival 2003), Noiret plays a rich
older married man who has set up an apartment
for his voluptuous young mistress, and is seen
dining with her and his teenage son. Knocking
violently on his door comes another old man, a
stranger played by Michel Bouquet (The “John
Gielgud” of French film actors) who has
come, as he says, to “piss you off!”
The subtitles on this film are brilliant translations,
whereby the very French phrase “vient faire
chier” becomes the very American phrase
“piss you off.”
It turns out that Bouquet has a French/Moroccan
maid, excellently played by Farida Rahouadj (in
the role performed on stage by the French movie-star,
Miou-Miou) who has become his lover each morning
that she cleans his apartment, and has restored
his virility. She is also Noiret’s maid
in the afternoons, but he treats her respectfully
as a servant, not knowing that she is dying to
be intimate with him! Bouquet starts harassing
Noiret into becoming her lover as well; telling
him how much he is missing, and how he can really
make the poor, unhappily married, maid happy.
So is set in place Bertrand Blier’s raunchy
sex comedy, which ran for a year on stage in Paris
with the same two male leads (Noiret’s first
stage role in 34 years), and the repartee and
badinage between these two brilliant comedians
is a joy to behold.
Noiret does indeed take the maid as his lover,
and all is copasetic until “Death”
appears, wearing a black corset, stockings, garters
and silent movie make-up, in the shape of Catherine
Hiegel (one of the great stage actresses from
LA COMEDIE FRANCAIS). She informs the two geriatric
lovers that the object of their affections is
about to die from a blood clot that afternoon!
In order to keep her alive, the two old “geezers”
have to make love (doggy style) to Ms. Death while
the maid and her fellow dying patients in the
hospital perform a Broadway style dance number
choreographed by the famous Jean-Claude Galotta!
The maid survives and all ends happily.
In an interview, Philippe Noiret describes the
film’s script as “rabelasian (after
Rabelais, the famous 16th century writer of brilliant
racy novels), impertinent, a pleasure for the
mouth,” gross but never vulgar, and I whole-heartedly
agree! If you want to see sophisticated French
sex comedy, as only they can do it, then please
see this film.
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