La Soupe aux choux (1981)
Directed by Jean Girault

Film Review

After the phenomenal success of Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres (1979), director Jean Girault and French comedy giant Louis de Funès were easily lured into revisiting the sci-fi spoof genre with La Soupe aux choux.  Both films were part of a craze in the 1970s and early 1980s for UFOs and science-fiction, following on the heels of Steven Spielberg's box office hit Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), in which a certain François Truffaut had a leading role.  La Soupe aux choux is closer in spirit to the latter ground-breaking film and, to some extent, can be viewed as a fairly effective parody of it.  In fact, the film was based on a popular novel by René Fallet, which de Funès had read and was very keen to make into a movie.

Although La Soupe aux choux was a great commercial success (it attracted an audience of 3.1 million in France on its first release), it received some very bad reviews when it was first released.  Certainly, this is an easy film to fault, both in terms of its content and its presentation.  Jacques Villeret in a yellow jumpsuit and making odd noises with his tongue has to be cinema's most unconvincing extra-terrestrial.  Much of the comedy is in appallingly bad taste, resorting to the lowest possible level with its relentless series of fart jokes.  Most significantly, worn down by illness and ill-served by a mediocre script, the great Louis de Funès appears to be reduced to a sad caricature of his former self.

In spite of its faults, La Soupe aux choux is not without charm and it does venture a few worthwhile comments on some important modern themes, such as the way society treats its older citizens.  There are some touching moments - such as when the character played by de Funès is reunited with his rejuvenated wife and realises that, although his love for her is still very much alive, he cannot be her husband.   Above all, the film is tremendous fun.  Once you get past the awful flatulence competition which starts off the film, it is difficult not to be amused by the mix of Gallic comedy and kitsch absurdity which is the film's sci-fi strand.  It may not be Louis de Funès's best film but it has its fair quota of laugh out loud moments.

Film Synopsis

In the remote French countryside, two old men - Le Glaude and Le Bombé - live out their solitary retirement, contenting themselves with their friendship, their wine and their irresistible cabbage soup.  One evening, their display of flatulence attracts an extra-terrestrial, La Denrée, who strikes up an immediate friendship with Le Glaude after tasting his cabbage soup.   The alien takes a canister of the soup back to his home planet, Oxo, and, to show their gratitude, the Oxoniens bring Le Glaude's dead wife, Francine, back to life.   For the misanthropic old man, finding himself again married to a woman of twenty is not the happiest of outcomes...