3/10
I don't think this film would be showing in the UK if it wasn't for the presence of Gerard Depardieu. In fact it might not even have been made in the first place. I would be happier if it hadn't.
It's not that long since I could barely sit through Afternoons With Margueritte in which GD played a vast middle aged imbecile, and here he is at it again. Serge Pilardosse is his character's name, just retired from a slaughterhouse, and adrift at home with wife Yolande Moreau. He has long hair, for no particular reason, and an old motorbike on which he sets forth to track down missing documents to enable him to collect his full pension. This is just the first of several improbable plot points.
Along the way and throughout the film he meets people who are either rude or weird, or both. They are deeply unsympathetic, but there seems no reason for their bad temper, except that the scriptwriters have decreed that it should be so. Serge, on the other hand, is terminally stupid and naive, an easy target for con artists, and unable to do more than gape at life uncomprehendingly. He too is not a sympathetic character, not because he is unpleasant, but because we have no reason to like or respect him.
A further complication is the occasional appearance of Isabelle Adjani as L"amour perdu de Serge (Serge's lost love), who, judging by the carefully designed bloodstains has hit herself on the head with a jar of of blackcurrant jam. But according to the film, she was in a bad accident with Serge - when they were kids. In which case, why is she played by a 55 year old woman? These and other questions will remain unanswered, not just because there are no answers, but because it's impossible to care. I think I can pinpoint exactly when I realised this was a film I disliked intensely. It was when Serge visits the house of a long lost cousin, who is even older than he is. The two men greet other as long lost family, and then we cut to a scene in which the two men, now naked, are lying on their backs on a bed, masturbating each other. Thanks, but no thanks.
I'm quite happy to believe that this film represents a certain strand of French humour, in which weirdness, rudeness and disconnectedness amount to a good time, but even if this is so, I am immune to this particular brand of hilarity, and frankly, would rather go and see Hnagover 2 a second time.
