Putain d'histoire d'amour (1981)
Directed by Gilles Béhat

Film Review

Director Gilles Béhat's second film after his debut feature Haro (1978) is this amiable romantic comedy-drama which helped to establish Richard Berry as a star in the French cinema firmament in the early 1980s. Berry would later take the lead in Béhat's subsequent film Urgence (1985), which is far more typical of the director's output, a gritty thriller in the neo-polar line. The cast list includes some other notable French actors who were near the start of their careers - Arielle Dombasle, Christopher Lambert and Ticky Holgado.

Even though Putain d'histoire d'amour is intended to be in a lighter vein than Béhat's grim policiers, it has some distinctly noirish passages and seems desperately to want to grow up and become a full-blown film noir. Jean Bany's play Neuf was the inspiration for the film's somewhat muddled narrative, which is all the better for its unexpected digressions into black comedy. To its credit, the film avoids the cloying sentiment-tweaking that mars many a romantic comedy-drama of this era but it is somewhat chaotic, with characters thinly sketched and a plot that is all over the place. Richard Berry's sympathetic presence just about holds it all together and the result is an enjoyably tongue-in-cheek variation on the mid-life-crisis theme.

Film Synopsis

Taxi driver Paul is addicted to gambling. When his colleagues offer him a bet to ferry a customer across Paris in record time he accepts without hesitation.  The wager backfires and he loses a job - again.  Unable to break the news to his wife, Rose, he passes the evening in a casino where he fritters away what little money he has left.  Then he meets Eva, an enigmatic striptease artist, who shares his passion for gambling...