Cabaret Paradis (2006)
Directed by Corinne Benizio, Gilles Benizio

Film Review

In the early 2000s, husband-and-wife team Gilles and Corinne Benizio became an overnight sensation in France with their frequent television appearances as the ebullient comedy duo Dino and Shirley.  Patrick Sébastien's popular programme Le Plus grand Cabaret du Monde brought them instant celebrity and quickly led to a highly successful stage career.  The instantly likeable duo's unerring penchant for misfired magic tricks and old-time music hall songs made them an attractive and highly distinctive pair, so expectations were high when Dino and Shirley made their big screen debut in 2006 in Cabaret Paradis, a film they not only performed in (with their customary élan) but also scripted and directed.

Some poor reviews and a generally lacklustre public reaction to the film ensured that it was a disappointing flop - hard to fathom given the duo's success on stage and television. To this reviewer at least, the critical and commercial failure of Cabaret Paradis is unwarranted, as the film has a great deal going for it.  Admittedly, it does fall down a little in the script department, with a plot that is painfully over-reliant on contrivance and cliché, and bland secondary characters that fail to ring true.  However, this is more than amply made up for in other areas, making it a highly enjoyable and innovative comedy tour de force.

The chemistry between the film's stars is of the kind that is found only in stage acts of the highest calibre, and watching the Benizio couple spar of one another is the main delight of this knowingly kitsch nostalgia romp.  A welcome departure from the kind of crass vulgarity that became all too endemic in French cinema around this time, Cabaret Paradis is a highly engaging foray into an altogether different kind of humour, a kind of comedy bricolage where variously oddly assorted elements from the 1950s music hall milieu are carelessly thrown together - always to great comic effect.  With the advent of YouTube, Shirley and Dino have now found a massive worldwide audience, so it's not impossible that their inauspicious first screen outing may yet acquire the status of a cult classic - and possibly a sequel.

Film Synopsis

Travelling performers Shirley and Dino cannot get to Paris fast enough when they learn that they have inherited a cabaret nightclub located in the Pigalle district of the capital.  Their hearts sink when they first set eyes on their unexpected windfall.  Rather than the thriving hot spot they had been expecting, it turns out that they have been saddled with a shockingly rundown building, home to a lacklustre show performed by totally untalented has-beens. Worse, Manu, the owner of a neighbouring casino claims that he has a legitimate claim to the nightclub, having won it from their gambling-addicted uncle. Shirley and Dino are not prepared to let these obstacles prevent them from realising their lifelong dream.  It is with more gusto than sense that they throw themselves into transforming the rundown nightclub into a rip-roaring success. Unfortunately for them, Manu is just as determined to get his hands on the nightclub, with a little help from his criminal associates...