An elephant betrays a lot : Jean Rochefort and his friends
After the success of The Return of the Big Blond (1974), sequel to Tall blonde with one black shoe (1972), again directed by Pierre Richard, Yves Robert followed up with another cult comedy. Released in 1976, An elephant betrays a lot It is a perfectly balanced blend of humor, romance and drama to describe the life ofa group of friends in their forties.
The phlegmatic Jean Rochefort plays one of the main roles, that of Étienne Dorsay, alongside him Claude Brasseur, Guy Bedos and Victor Lanoux. The first plays Daniel, always bubbly, who ends up confessing to his friends his homosexuality, an important issue at that time. The second is Simon, a hypochondriac doctor who can no longer stand his suffocating mother. Finally, the last plays Bouly, who under his seductive macho appearance will get slapped when his wife decides to leave him. All this takes place under the watchful eye of Étienne, who fantasy another lifemade of infidelity.
It emerges fromAn elephant betrays a lot a bittersweet comedy, which manages to represent this world of forty-year-old bourgeois drawing a certain empathy from it. More for some than for others, however. It is in particular the character of Daniel who is most disturbed when he learns of his mother’s death. Étienne is much more unpleasant, but today he seems more ridiculous than anything else. A character who has no ambition to be pleasant. The fact remains that the feature film, as it is written Telerama“gets better with age” and remains relevant in the “buddy movie” genre.
A success and an American remake
In fact, years later, we found other similar films of this genre The heart of men (2003) or The little handkerchiefs (2010). Works often appreciated by the public, as evidenced by the cardAn elephant betrays a lot on his exit. Almost 3 million tickets were sold the year of its release. The 7th highest score at the French box office, ahead of the famous Taxi by Martin Scorsese (2.7 million entries). But the impact of Yves Robert’s comedy went beyond France and attracted the attention of Hollywood.
In 1984, Gene Wilder proposed a remake under the title The Girl in Red. A reference to the scene where Jean Rochefort meets Anny Duperey in a parking lot sees her long red dress fly off due to an air vent, revealing her underwear. A scene itself inspired by that of Marilyn Monroe In Seven years of reflection (1955). Gene Wilder plays her in his remake and is the trigger, with Kelly LeBrock playing the woman in red. If the American version had convinced, grossing 25 million dollars in the United States, in France the public would have preferred the original version. The feature film has only 75,000 spectators.
Source: Cine Serie
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