La Gifle (1974)
Directed by Claude Pinoteau

Film Review

Director Claude Pinoteau followed up his stylish thriller Le Silencieux (1973) with this amiable but somewhat shallow portrayal of the problematic relationship between a teenage daughter and her middle-aged father.   The film presages Pinoteau's subsequent (more convincing) coming-of-age comedy-drama La Boum (1980), and was a notable box office hit, achieving an audience of just under four million in France.  Isabelle Adjani is remarkable in her first major screen role, her portrayal of a rebellious adolescent beautifully complemented by Lino Ventura, who plays the father who is reluctant to let his daughter go.  This is an atypical role for Ventura, who is more strongly associated with tough gangster and cop roles in gritty policier films such as Le Deuxième souffle (1966) and Le Clan des Siciliens (1969). Ventura's sensitive and subtly moving performance brings an authenticity to La Gifle which is less evident in the in the script, and which Pinoteau occasionally undermines with some heavy-handed direction. 

Pinoteau's shortcomings as a director are pretty well negated by the quality of the performances.  As well as a few established actors (Annie Girardot, Georges Wilson and Nicole Courcel) the supporting cast includes several highly talented young actors at the start of their careers, many of whom (Michel Aumont, Nathalie Baye, Richard Berry and André Dussollier) would go on to be major players in French cinema.  Improbably cast as Annie Girardot's love interest is the well-known British character actor Robert Hardy, just a few years before he found fame as Siegfried Farnon in the long-running BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small.  Hardy (who had previously worked with Pinoteau and Ventura on Le Silencieux) evokes perfectly the French idea of English charm and eccentricity - his strained confrontation with Ventura (who evokes perfectly the English idea of French surliness) is the most memorable thing about this film.

Film Synopsis

Jean Doulean is a 50-something geography teacher who lives in Paris with his 18-year-old daughter Isabelle.  It has been several years since Jean's wife Hélène left him and settled in England with her new partner.  Not one to let this desertion get to him, Jean was soon pursuing a relationship with another woman, Madeleine, but this soon came to an end and he was left to pick up the pieces after being abandoned a second time.  Jean's professional life then became as fraught as his love life when he got into a fracas with the police and now he faces the prospect of having to move to another school.

Despite all this private turmoil, Jean does his best to be a good father to his teenage daughter, not knowing that she plans to give up her studies in medicine so that she can live with her boyfriend, Marc.  When this is revealed to him, Jean is so shocked that he slaps his daughter on the face.  This is one betrayal he cannot accept, but by hitting his precious Isabelle all he succeeds in doing is hastening her departure from his life.  Such is the girl's disgust for her father that she wastes no time leaving him so that she can join her mother across the channel...