User Reviews

This movie could accurately be described as a whimsical conceit that tends to out-stay its welcome. Admittedly, a hard-working cast, including Jean-Pierre Cassel and the lovely Anouk Aimée, does make a good impression. And there is also a delightful music score by Georges Delerue.

The movie's main problems lie in the script by Daniel Boulanger and Philippe de Broca. De Broca also directs, and perhaps at least one of these chores was a mistake. There are just too many dull patches in the script and certainly not enough inventiveness to carry it for ninety minutes. Half an hour shorter, the movie would be a delight, but as it stands, it just misses the bus. French title: Le Farceur.

With Le Farceur we have (after Les Jeux de L'Amour, 1960, by the same Philippe de Broca) another Jean-Pierre Cassel festival, who jumps, dances, runs, sings, whistles, taps, etc. In short, who makes a festival. In short, who makes a festival. A character who sleeps with all the women he meets, his first wife, the maid, his mistress (the husband is of course not happy), Anouk Aimé (her husband does not care and seems concerned only with money), the maid of the hotel, and the two mothers of his two children.

We are in a bourgeois family that has been, with Georges Wilson, Geneviève Cluny, a family of entertainers who do not move, of which Jean-Pierre Cassel seems to be the only one to leave the house; and one that is: Anouk Aimé, her husband, a capitalist boss, François Maistre, brilliant as often (his first scene is brilliant and worthy of an anthology).

All the scenes taking place in the family of acrobats that had been are also very well written and constitute the flavor of the film, with a geography of the house and a work on the sets that impresses the view, which could also be a theater set.

The scenes with Anouk Aimée are more bland and less exciting, probably because the dramatic subtext emerges rather quickly.

Under the guise of a joyful film and a joyful character, it is finally a very sad story that the film tells, the character of Jean-Pierre Cassel, changing women according to the meetings, finds himself alone, within his family. And does not seem to know how to have a real love story.