"Dupont-Lajoie" easily passes for Yves Boisset's best work.One can say the demonstration is ponderous ,one cannot deny its absolute efficiency.There's in this ruthless plot a spiral of violence which grabs the audience and pins them down till the last pictures.
A petit bourgeois,Lajoie,(Jean Carmet's finest performance) ,go camping by the seaside with his missus and his son.There he meets up with friends whose daughter Brigitte (Isabelle Huppert:it's the movie that put her on the map)has a gentle romance with the boy.Probably sexually frustrated,Lajoie tries to rape Brigitte and kills her.And there's a shanty town for emigrated workers not far from here...
The critics generally did not like it ,calling it a caricature:but since we've seen worse in real life.On the other hand, the audience made it a cult movie in France,quite rightly so.The depiction of these average Frenchmen on vacation rings true and Yves Boisset does not fall into the -all of them b...- trap:the "hero"'s son attitude shows the positive side of the human nature.
There's also a formidable spoof on these stupid "games" which the television organizes for the vacationers.Jean-Pierre Marielle ,as Leo Tartaffione ,a self-important emcee , is incredibly funny.
Maybe the last scene is questionable.But do not let it prevent you from enjoying the rest .Relatively speaking,it's the French "big carnival".
A petit bourgeois,Lajoie,(Jean Carmet's finest performance) ,go camping by the seaside with his missus and his son.There he meets up with friends whose daughter Brigitte (Isabelle Huppert:it's the movie that put her on the map)has a gentle romance with the boy.Probably sexually frustrated,Lajoie tries to rape Brigitte and kills her.And there's a shanty town for emigrated workers not far from here...
The critics generally did not like it ,calling it a caricature:but since we've seen worse in real life.On the other hand, the audience made it a cult movie in France,quite rightly so.The depiction of these average Frenchmen on vacation rings true and Yves Boisset does not fall into the -all of them b...- trap:the "hero"'s son attitude shows the positive side of the human nature.
There's also a formidable spoof on these stupid "games" which the television organizes for the vacationers.Jean-Pierre Marielle ,as Leo Tartaffione ,a self-important emcee , is incredibly funny.
Maybe the last scene is questionable.But do not let it prevent you from enjoying the rest .Relatively speaking,it's the French "big carnival".