Inspecteur la Bavure (1980)
Directed by Claude Zidi

Film Review

Throughout the 1970s, the film policier came to the fore as the most popular genre in French cinema, with audiences seemingly addicted to slick, hard-boiled and increasingly violent thrillers that were very much in the American mould.  By the close of the decade, the genre was proving to be ripe for parody and the comédie-policière was once again becoming a box office winner, as it had done in the early-to-mid 1960s, in such films as Georges Lautner's Les Tontons flingueurs (1963) and Ne nous fâchons pas (1966).  In 1984, director Claude Zidi would deliver the genre's biggest hit - Les Ripoux - but a few years before this he helmed an equally entertaining police romp, with top comic performer Coluche giving Dirty Harry a good run for his money, as an overzealous cop who just can't help mucking things up, egged on by his over-proud mum and a pathological desire to follow in his father's footsteps.

The year before he famously entered the French presidential election race (challenging François Mitterand to the top post), Coluche was at the height of his popularity and in Inspecteur la Bavure he is well-matched by another French icon of the decade, Gérard Depardieu.  After the success of Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses in 1974, Depardieu enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom and became the most prominent French actor of his generation.  It wasn't until Zidi's boisterous crowdpleaser, however, that he proved himself a capable comedy performer, the perfect straight man comedy foil to the effortless clown Coluche.  This led him to partner another comedy icon, Pierre Richard, in the enduring classic La Chèvre (1981) and its two sequels.

Basing his portrayal on the notorious French gangster Jacques Mesrine (later given the full biopic treatment in a lavish 2008 diptych), who was finally brought to book the year before Inspecteur la Bavure was made, Depardieu exudes both creepy menace and seductive charm by the barrel-load in an ambiguous character role that plays to his dramatic and comedic strengths, and he even succeeds in rendering his pretty loathsome character sympathetic under the unrelenting assault he suffers from both Coluche and the film's other star, Dominique Lavanant, an obvious shoe-in for the part of the feisty go-getter journalist. Depardieu's funniest scene is the one in which he flicks through an album to choose a new face for himself. He'd like to have looked like Alain Delon, but apparantly that one has already been taken.  Making a fleeting appearance in the film is a young Richard Anconina, who would subsequently co-star alongside Coluche in an altogether more serious kind of thriller, Tchao Pantin (1983).

Having proven himself to be a master of mainstream comedy, on such films as Le Grand Bazar (1973) and L'Aile ou la Cuisse (1976) (two pevious collaborations with Coluche), Claude Zidi succeeds in combining the traditional policier elements with zany knockabout comedy, making Inspecteur La Bavure one of the box office hits of 1980 (it drew an audience of 3.7 million, the third most popular French film of the year). It may not be the director's finest work (it pales into insignificance next to Les Ripoux) but it is worth watching to savour the rapport between the two chalk-and-cheese lead actors.  If the prospect of seeing Coluche dragged up as a Parisian tart doesn't float your boat, there are at least two stand-out set-pieces to get you howling with laughter - the apocalyptic climax in which Coluche defeats Depardieu with the help of a bulldozer that seems to think it is some kind of rampaging prehistoric monster, and an earlier, no less surreal, scene in which Coluche wrestles with a blow-up doll in a parked car to hilarious effect.

Film Synopsis

Jules Clément's distinguished police career ends tragically when he is fatally wounded whilst trying to bring a notorious hoodlum to book.  On his deathbed, he is gratified when his young son Michel promises to adopt his profession and become a redoubtable police officer.  Twenty years on, Michel's ambition looks like becoming a reality when he is admitted into the French police service as a trainee officer, after just scraping through his exams.  Assigned to Paris, Michel's aptitude for getting himself into trouble soon gets in the way of his promotion prospects, although he has an opportunity to prove his mettle by assisting in the fierce police hunt for the psychopathic crook Roger Morzini.  Dubbed Public Enemy Number One, the latter immediately attracts the attention of Marie-Anne Prossant, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist.

Determined to prove herself as a journalist, Marie-Anne sets her sights on getting an exclusive interview with Morzini, and to this end she uses every opportunity that comes her way to goad him into meeting up with her.  Fearing that his capture may be imminent, Morzini enlists the help of a skilled plastic surgeon to give him a completely new face, and in his new guise he wastes no time gaining the confidence of the ever hapless Michel.  Mistaking the criminal for a successful crime writer, Michel befriends him and gives away information that will allow Morzini to defy the police's best efforts to arrest him.  Marie-Anne is also taken in by the good-looking crook and, not knowing his real identity, allows herself to be abducted by him and taken to an abandoned mansion.  Morzini's plan is to extort an enormous ransom from her father but this goes badly wrong when Michel suddenly shows up with a bulldozer and turns his penchant for destruction to his advantage...