Monkey Pleasure
Despite his detestation of the New Wave (you got that one right, Jean)Gabin worked well with a new generation of actors, specifically Alain Delon and, as here, Jean-Paul Belmondo who was a genuine product of le nouvelle vague. This is a story of unlikely male friendship yet it is light years short of Il Postino in terms of intensity, it uses the unlikely bonding to generate laughs but L'Emmerdeur or virtually any of Francis Weber's other male bonding titles - Le Chevre, Les Comperes, Tais- Toi - leave it dead in the water. And yet it works, it weaves its spell, spins its web and we succumb gratefully. Of course Belmondo's sole representative of the nouvelle vague is hopelessly outnumbered not just by Gabin himself (even if by himself he is worth ALL the new waveleteers put together) but by the wonderful Suzanne Flon, Noel Roquevert and Gabriele Dorziat albeit in a cameo, all veterans of real French film making. All in all it's a joyous experience laced with a beguiling charm.score 7/10
writers_reign 14 October 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2688492/36022
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