Cause toujours... tu m'intéresses! (1979)
Directed by Edouard Molinaro

Film Review

Having scored notable successes with L'Emmerdeur (1973) and La Cage aux folles (1978), director Edouard Molinaro and screenwriter Francis Veber subsequently pooled their resources to deliver another classic comedy.  Despite being the least well-known of their collaborations, Cause toujours... tu m'intéresses! is arguably their most sophisticated film, a bittersweet romantic comedy that offers a mature and thoughtful reflection on solitude and the difficulty of finding that elusive soul mate.  The film marks the return of François Perrin, Veber's recurring everyman character, who was previously played by Pierre Richard in Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972).

There is a genuine charm to this film, with derives principally from the delightful on-screen chemistry between the two lead actors, Annie Girardot and Jean-Pierre Marielle.  These two first rate performers are as adept at playing drama as comedy and both bring a reality and subtle poignancy to their portrayal of two middle-aged lonely hearts.  In addition to the humour, which is slickly rendered by the screenwriter and the actors, there is also more than a hint of pathos, reminding us that comedy and tragedy are inextricably intertwined.

Veber's penchant for the burlesque is very much in evidence in two memorable sequences.  The first is the one in which Girardot and Marielle meet for the first time.  Marielle cannot go through with the meeting and ends up having to watch Girardot accost a stranger who, naturally, assumes she is a woman of easy virtue.  Marielle manages to save the situation (just), but still cannot reveal who he is, so he ends up playing his own rival for the rest of the film.  The second excursion into farce comes when Marielle gets into an argument with a sarcastic traffic warden, and the two end up scrabbling in the mud like a pair of schoolboys.  A propos, the warden in question is played by Michel Blanc, another comedy legend of French cinema who had just found celebrity through his appearance in the Bronzés films.  It's a small world, n'est-ce pas?

Film Synopsis

François Perrin is a radio reporter who is coping badly with living by himself after his divorce.  One evening, the solitude becomes so unbearable that he picks up the telephone and dials a number at random. The voice on the other end of the line is a woman's and François is inclined to think he has struck lucky.  It so happens that the person he has fortuitously contacted, a pharmacist named Christine, is as lonely and depressed as he is.  Not quite yet over the hill but rapidly veering in that direction, she hasn't had a man in her life for ages, and so François's unsolicited call strikes her more as a welcome amusement than an irritation.

Encouraged by his interlocutor's apparent friendliness, François continues ringing her up, always taking care to conceal his real identity.  Disguising his voice, François introduces himself as a successful writer named Thibaud.  Several telephone conversations later, he finally summons up the courage to meet up with his affable phone mate.  The reluctant Romeo is unsure what to expect when he heads for the agreed rendezvous, and he is pleasantly surprised by Christine's appearance.  She is about the same age as he is, reasonably good looking and clearly intent on making a good impression.

At the last moment, François's nerve fails him.  Unable to go through with his original deception, he decides instead to pass himself off as a complete stranger.  François's first meeting with Christine is awkward and he finds it much harder to gain her interest when speaking to her face-to-face than when talking to her over the phone.   Christine now finds she is being courted by two men - one who claims to be a well-known journalist, the other a famous writer.  When will it dawn on her that these are in fact one in the same man?  For just how long can François keep up his double deception?