Tais Toi (Shut Up)

A French comedy crime caper with three titles Tais Toi (2003) is the original, Shut Up is the English translation and it’s also known as Ruby & Quentin after the two main characters. Quentin, played with complete abandon by Gerard Depardieu, is a small time inept crook who has a daft smile and yearns for a friendship; he ends up in a prison cell with the murderous Ruby (Jean Reno), who plays Hardy to Depardieu’s Laurel, someone he imagines will make a great friend. Ruby on the other hand is a hardened criminal who has been having an affair with his boss’s wife, now deceased! Ruby steals the proceeds of a robbery carried out by his ex-boss Vogel as a sort of pay back.  With Quentin in tow he now has to escape from prison and keep one step a head of Vogel, the Paris Police and the prison psychologist!

Directed and written by Francis Veber, its in a similar vain to the three original Taxi films and Besson’s Subway (1985) in that the script has the same madcap humour played solely for fun and on that level Tais Toi really works.  As a bonus you get some great Paris location shots from the Italian cinematographer Luciano Tovoli who worked on Veber’s best known films The Closet (2001) and Le Diner de Cons (1998) and has recently finished photographing Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D (2012) which to date has not been released in the UK.

Madcap humour from Reno and Depardieu.

   

Mammuth

Retirement is a 2000 piece Jigsaw puzzel?

Described as a quirky road movie this rather odd French film, Mammuth 2010 stars a hugely rotund Gerard Depardieu, a man you want to avoid on a plane journey, as Serge Pilardosee. Just turned 60 he is retired from his job in a meat packing plant but the poor man can’t draw his state pension because previous employers, and there was a lot of them, have not submitted records of his employment or earnings. Taking his old trusty Mammuth motorbike out of its enforced retirement he sets off on a journey to track down his ex-employers and elicit the required paperwork that will release his pension.

Perhaps its escaping on your trusty motorbike?

This curious movie is directed by the partnership of Gustave de Kervern and Beniot Delephine and features, as well as Depardieu who is superb, the Belgian actress Yolande Moreau, whose best work includes Seraphine (2009) Amelie (2001) and the ingenious Micmacs (2009), as the retirees long suffering wife, and Isabelle Adjani (Possession 1991, La Reine Margot 1994) as the ghost/spirit of Serge’s long dead girlfriend killed in a motorbike accident.  Funny and strangely bizarre with some very weird moments including one which involves our traveller with another pensioner engaging in a session of man to man mutual masturbation!! Can’t wait for the US remake?

or maybe its a time to reassess your past?

Potiche

Francois Ozon latest movie Potiche (2010) has been based on a 1980 stage comedy of the same name. Known as a Boulevard Play, it was this kind of theatre that provided entertainment for the Parisian middle classes, generally dealing with topical satire and carrying out light-hearted attacks on sexual morality, the British equivalent would be the Whitehall farces of Brian Rix. This is the second time Ozon has used this type of play as a basis for a film, the first being 8 femmes and like 2002 film he has populated it with icons of the French cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. This new film also contains political themes namely labour unrest and feminist struggles that give this comedy/melodrama a certain amount of depth that was missing from 8 femmes.

It’s France the year’s 1977. Suzanne Pujol (Deneuve) is the submissive, housebound wife of wealthy Robert Pujol, tyrannical managing director of her late fathers successful umbrella factory, a business he rules in a dictatorial manner also equally domineering with both his grown up children. The factory workers go on strike and take Robert hostage, on his his release has a heart attack, Suzanne is persuaded by local mayor and communist MP Maurice Babin (Depardieu), a man she once had a fling with, to manage the factory in Roberts absence. To everyone’s surprise, she proves herself a competent replacement and revitalizes the business as well as giving both her children positions of importance. But when Robert returns from a recuperative cruise in top form he takes exception to what he finds.

Deneuve and Depardieu.

This garish camp farce succeeds in being entertaining, lighthearted and diverting and Ozon has no trouble obtaining great performances from its ensemble cast. The late 1970’s settings are spot on and I think the director’s digs at modern French politics are very well executed, Deneuve character is alleged to be based on Segolene Royal who stood against Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential elections. But it does get quite embarrassing sometimes, for example the dance scene in the Le Badaboum and Suzanne bursting into song at the end of the film (can’t imagine the grocers daughter breaking into song on hearing her election results!) Then there’s the script, which at times can make you squirm. Not to everyone’s taste! I think you have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy this one.