MarioB

A bunch of young men tries to operate a night-club in a small town of France, despite the competition of an older man. Claude Zidi was never a genius, but through the years of his long carreer, he had made some pretty funny films. Most of these were with veteran stars like DeFunes, Noiret, LHermitte, Depardieu, Pierre Richard, etc. For this one, he tries with younger actors. And he fails : this movie is just awful, stupid, boring and empty. There is nothing funny here. There is no ideas and the story - there is a story ? - is predictible. And it's very sexiest for young women. Zidi thinks they're all pieces of meat. And I will never understand why we have to hear English music in a French movie. Don't waste your time with this one : there are many very funny French movies you can see, and

some were from Claude Zidi.

First of all, thanks Glaschu and vive Toronto too ! Seems that there's only the two of us who have seen this movie... This is a good quality film, in an intimate european style, but sometimes it's too

melodramatic. I'm sure that young Emile Nelligan was not really like that. The movie shows an idealization of a life of a poet: you know, the guy that always suffering every minute of the day... I think it's a myth. But I like the movie for the late 19th century settings. It really represents the bourgeois life in a very conservative

Quebec. Note that all the young poets dreams about Paris and

France. In fact, most of our best artists of that time had to go to Paris to learn and express themselves in a more free way. I had wish that the movie show us more of Charles Gill, a drunken friend of Nelligan, who was the most original poet of that time, after Nelligan. Charles Gill died in 1918 and, next year, he was published ! That shows you the difficuties for artists of that time to find ways to express themselves in the public sphere (And the complete work of Charles Gill will be published only in... 1999!). Note also the presence of the young Idola St-Jean, in love with Nelligan. She will be an important feminist of Quebec, fighting for the right of women to vote. She will also be one of the rare women teaching in an university. She will die in 1936, few years before Nelligan and the right for women to vote. For the facts about the Quebec of the late 19st and early 20st, it's a very fine movie.

That's a good question ! Because I'm only adding the same type of comments of some other users. The Coen Brothers never makes a dull film, because they don't make movies but cinema, as a part of a creative and artistic demonstration. This film is school-of-cinema stuff ! For those, like me, who thinks that USA Cinema reachs 80 % of it's peak in the 1940's,

they surely love this film. It's kind of tribute of the Film-Noir genre. The use of shadows makes me think about the Edward Dymytryk movies of 1945-1950. Billy Bob Thornton looks like a bored Humphrey Bogart and the settings of the late 1940's is simply fabulous. It's a cool film, like a J.J. Cale record at 3 AM, with a good cigarette and a glass of whiskey. It's also very slow and that's a great quality. Films are, in fact, pictures and are made to watch, not to be heard. This one is simply beautiful to see. There's also a strange sense of humour about hair !