Que les gros salaires lèvent le doigt! (1982)
Directed by Denys Granier-Deferre

Film Review

Denys Granier-Deferre, son of the distinguished French filmmaker Pierre Granier-Deferre, made his directing debut with this caustic satire which is just as relevant today as it was when the film first came out in 1982, at a time of galloping unemployment in France.  Jean Poiret and Michel Piccoli head a mouth-watering cast that includes rising star Daniel Auteuil, newcomer Tchéky Karyo and established talent Marie Laforêt.  Despite such a promising cast, however, the film's uneven tempo and lacklustre screenplay prevent it from making the impact it deserves, given the topicality of its subject matter.  The film was not a great success and after a few further misfires Granier-Deferre migrated to French television, where he has spent the bulk of his career, working on shows such as Navarro (1989-90) and Maigret (2000), and a spate of generally watchable TV movies.

The most memorable part of Que les gros salaires lèvent le doigt! is the final sequence in which a ruthless executive (Poiret at his best) enacts an ingenious, but cruel, method to reduce the size of his management team, by getting them to play musical chairs.  It is a crude but effective metaphor for the way in which big business treats its employees, as if they were children or cattle.  Jean Poiret's portrayal of the hard-hearted boss is exquisitely true-to-life, and it is only in one fleeting moment that the character is allowed to let the mask slip and show the tortured soul beneath.  You have to be tough, and ever so slightly psychopathic, to succeed in business.  The other notable performance is supplied by Michel Piccoli who plays an equally opaque character, a Mephistophelean anarchic outsider who has a dubious relationship with Daniel Auteuil (well, they share a bunk bed) and somehow always manages to get the upper hand, even over someone as seemingly invulnerable as Poiret's granite-hearted CEO.  Mathias Gokalp's 2009 film Rien de personnel covers the same ground, but with more insight and a far more vicious satirical edge.

Film Synopsis

André Joeuf, the head of an insurance company, invites his staff to spend a relaxing weekend at his house in the country.  Authoritarian and cynical, Joeuf easily manages to instil fear in his employees, who suspect there may be an ulterior motive to this seemingly friendly gesture.  Indeed there is.  Joeuf has a number of redundancies to make, but he hasn't yet made up his mind who is to go...