Les Fugitifs (1986)
Directed by Francis Veber

Film Review

For his fourth and final collaboration with writer-director Francis Veber, comedy icon Pierre Richard teams up once more with Gérard Depardieu, reforming a double act that had already notched up two box office hits - La Chèvre (1981) and Les Compères (1983).  The film's popularity in France (it drew an audience of 4.5 million) led Veber to script and direct an American remake Three Fugitives (1989), starring Nick Nolte and Martin Short.  Whilst the latter film is massively inferior to the original, it proved to be an even greater success, grossing over 40 million dollars.  Depardieu would work with Veber on two subsequent films - Le Placard (2001) and Tais-toi! (2002).

Francis Veber was the man who established the buddy movie concept as a mainstay of French comedy in 1973 with his early hit L'Emmerdeur, which offered us the unlikely pairing of Lino Ventura and Jacques Brel.  Many of his subsequent films employed the same 'odd couple' concept, none more effectively than his sparky Richard-Depardieu offerings.  Les Fugitifs repeats the central premise of La Chèvre and Les Compères, with the accident prone but good-natured Richard taming the Depardieu brute as the two become locked in a relationship of inescapable mutual dependency.  Here, the thing that binds them together is a cute little girl - Richard's mute daughter - who succeeds in awakening Depardieu's long buried compassion and need for affection.

The film does tend to get a little schmaltzy in places and it is painfully clear throughout that Veber's forte is comedy, not human psychology.  With a lesser actor than Depardieu Les Fugitifs would have been totally spoiled by its author's clumsy excursions into sentimentality, but fortunately the great thesp is on hand to salvage Veber's awkwardly saccharine dialogue and invest it with genuine feeling.  The film doesn't quite manage to make up for its recurring bouts of gratuitous mawkishness, but there are a few scenes (notably the one where Depardieu visits Richard's little girl in a home for state fostered children) that genuinely do stir the heart strings.

Les Fugitifs may not hit all the right emotional notes but it still manages to be an entertaining romp, one that makes the most of the priceless rapport of its equally talented lead performers.  Although Richard's star was by this time in the descendent, with Depardieu now proving to be the main box office draw, the two actors are supremely well-matched and function as possibly the best comedy double act that French cinema has given us.  The sequence in which Richard has to pose as Depardieu's wife, with a wig that resolutely refuses to behave itself, is pure comedy gold, as are earlier scenes in which Richard ham-fistedly tries to hold up a bank and walks into a lamppost (twice).  Two other notable performers, Jean Carmet and Michel Blanc, show up fleetingly to lob in a few more comedy grenades.  

Veber's well-meaning but pretty inept attempts to make this a more serious kind of comedy - including elements that would be much more at home in a hard-boiled action thriller of the time - rebound and diminish the film's comic impact greatly, although this is a minor sin compared with the author's inability to offer genuine emotional feeling in place of treacly sentimentality. Thankfully, what could so easily have been a comedy disaster is amply redeemed by its two incomparable lead performers.

Film Synopsis

A series of bank robberies has earned Jean Lucas a five year stretch in prison.  Once his term of incarceration is over, he vows to turn over a new leaf and become an honest man, a resolution which his old enemy police superintendent Duroc doubts he will stick to for long.  After selling the only valuable items in his possession - a few jewels - Lucas heads for the nearest bank to cash his cheque and immediately walks into his worst nightmare.  François Pignon, one of life's natural born losers, has chosen this particular moment to hold up the bank, to obtain the money he desperately needs to prevent the social services from taking his infant daughter Jeanne into care.  Believing that Lucas is the culprit, the police turn up in force, and Pignon's only recourse is to take the former professional bank robber hostage in his escape.

In their desperate bid for freedom, Pignon accidentally shoots Lucas in the leg.  To make amends, he takes the wounded man to a veterinarian friend, Dr Martin, who manages to remove the bullet.  During his recovery, Lucas gets to meet Pignon's daughter and develops a kindly interest in her, moved by the fact that she hasn't uttered a single word since the death of her mother a few years ago.  Despite his justified antagonism towards Pignon, Lucas agrees to help him obtain the forged documents he needs to make his escape across the border into Italy.  In return, Pignon will write a signed confession exculpating Lucas for the bank robbery.  Their plans are soon put in jeopardy when Jeanne is taken into custody by social services.  Only with Lucas's help will her father have any chance of being reunited with his daughter...