Bonsoir (1994)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

Michel Serrault excels in this totally of-the-wall satirical comedy which makes a bizarre assessment of modern life.  He plays an impish vagrant who uses his new-found freedom to improve the lives of his fellow man, by briefly insinuating himself into their lives. The twist is that he is infinitely wiser and far better dressed than the policemen who are hunting him, making a strong resonance with the neo-thrillers which were so prevalent in French cinema in the 1970s and '80s.

In fact, there is much to suggest that this film is an extreme parody of the French thriller genre.  Watching the film immediately after a standard French thriller from the 1980s (when the genre tended towards self-parody, witness Le Battant (1983) and Le Marginal (1983)), the similarities are apparent.  The police are presented as inept scheming villains, lacking the moral fibre and intelligence of the individuals they are pursuing, whilst the latter are presented as victims of an unjust legislative system who contribute far more to society.  Bonsoir goes much further and suggests that whole of modern society, not only the police, is culpable of mediocrity and moral laxity.  It takes an outsider like Alex Ponttin who, free from the bonds of modern living, to point the way to a better future.

The film was directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky, who throughout his career has lived up to his name with his crude but incisive satires on French life. Mocky enjoyed success early in his career with popular comedies such as Un drôle de paroissien (1963) and La Grande lessive (!) (1968), but by the late 1980s he was a marginal director, more preoccupied with saying things he wanted to say than pandering to the whims of the mainstream. Bonsoir is typical in that it attracted only a very modest audience (around ten thousand spectators) but it combines its author's strident anti-establishment rant with a pleasing whimsical charm. Typical of Mocky, the supposed representatives of moral authority (the police, the clergy, even the President of the Republic) are presented in this film as effete hypocrites or fools.  Whilst society and state sink into a numbing inertia, bereft of integrity and humanity, it is left to the eccentrics, the outsiders, in short the Jean-Pierre Mockys, to build a more cohesive society and a better world.

Had it taken itself a little more seriously, Bonsoir could have been quite a profound film, but as it is its comic excesses prevent it from being a truly effective satire.  In common with much of Mocky's work, their is an abundance of ideas, but few if any are developed as far as you might hope.  True, the film is entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking, but it can't help feeling a tad superficial and inconclusive.

Film Synopsis

After having first lost his wife then his job as a tweed tailor, Alex Ponttin has devised a novel way to keep himself in touch with society.  He admits himself into people's homes, by pretending to be a relative or an official, and persuading his victims to give him a night's free board.  With his disarming, amiable personality, he is rarely refused, and, on each occasion, he slips quietly away at first light without any fuss.  This happy routine is ruined, however, when someone starts to burgle each home he stays in, making Alex the obvious suspect.  Fortunately, the police officers investigating the case are so terminally stupid that Alex has little chance of being arrested...