Cible émouvante
1993 Comedy / Drama / Crime   
Director: Pierre Salvadori
Starring: Jean Rochefort, Marie Trintignant, Guillaume Depardieu, Patachou, Wladimir Yordanoff


 
Summary
Whilst on an assignment, professional hitman Victor Meynard runs into a delivery boy, Antoine.  Unable to kill the adolescent, Meynard adopts him as his accomplice, in spite of Antoine’s evident lack of enthusiasm for his new career.  They are hired by a Corsican gangster to kill a con artist Renée Dandrieux for palming off a fake painting.  Again, Meynard’s luck is against him, and when he fails to kill Renée, with Antoine’s help, the Corsican gangster sends another hitman to kill all three of them...

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Review
The crime thriller has been a popular target for parody in France ever since the heyday of the genre in the 1950s.  Whilst Cible émouvante is an entertaining film with many plus points, it adds little in the way of originality or style to what has gone before it.  The plot is infuriatingly predictable, the writer appearing to take the obvious course at ever turn, and the film ends up appearing to parody itself.  Fortunately, the film is mercifully short and ends way before it could have become tedious.

The film’s main strength lies in the wonderful interactions between the three lead actors.  Jean Rochefort, better known for straight roles as the archetypal hard man of the French film noir (or ‘polar’) genre, shows an endearing flair for comedy and contributes most to the film’s great comic moments. Marie Trintignant is Rochefort’s unlikely co-star, less convincing but giving an amusingly feisty performance.  Caught in the middle is young Guillaume Depardieu (son of Gérard), often outrageously funny in his familiar gawping way; female devotees of the actor will certainly not be disappointed.

© James Travers 1999

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User Comments
Excruciatingly funny farce about a hitman and his protégés.  Not available on video for about 15 years and never released on DVD.  It seems that pirated versions (with free downloaded subtitles) are the only way to access much of modern French cinema.  The English language remake is likely to have a longer lasting reach with Jean Roquefort's original performance lost to time.
Mike (Sydney, Australia) 

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