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Credits
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Summary
Sam Lion has led a full and successful life. As a young boy, abandoned by
his mother, he was adopted by a circus family, where he developed a fondness for big cats.
His career as a circus acrobat was cut short by an accident, after which he started a
new life in commerce. His revolutionary cleaning products made him a wealthy man,
the head of a corporate empire, but his private life was just as eventful. He marred
young, had two children, his first wife died tragically, and he re-married. Now
in his fifties, Sam has only one wish - to escape. Whilst crossing the ocean in
a one-man dinghy, he decides to fake his own death. With a new identity, he travels
the world before settling in an African game reserve. Here, he encounters Al Duvivier,
one of his former employees. Recognising Sam, Al tells him that since his presumed
death his company has run into financial difficulties. Sam decides it is time to
return to France but, unable to resume his previous life, he uses Al as a go-between to
settle the problems of both his company and his daughter Victoria. The deception
works for a while...
Review
Inspired by the decision of his friend Jacques Brel to abandon fame and fortune in France
for the tranquillity of the Marquesas Islands, director Claude Lelouch had little difficulty
selling the idea of Itinéraire d'un enfant gaté to actor Jean-Paul
Belmondo. At the time, Belmondo had forsaken cinema to resume his career in
the theatre, starring in Robert Hossein’s hugely successful stage production of Kean.
The actor saw a great deal of himself in the character of Sam Lion and agreed not only
to star in the film but also to co-produce it with Lelouch.
Itinéraire d'un enfant gaté reveals in Belmondo a very different persona to the one that cinema audiences had seen previously. Although still playing a larger than life character, a loner and a maverick, Belmondo shows a great deal more of the inner man than we have previously glimpsed. Here, Belmondo is practically an anti-hero - he abandons those he loves and, like a spoiled child, he ruins his life in pursuit of some unattainable aim - yet, for all that, he is more sympathetic than ever. This must surely rate as one of the iconic actor’s better performances. Belmondo’s style of acting works well with Lelouch’s approach to filmmaking, the actor’s verve for improvisation matching up tidily with the director’s aversion to following a written script. (This is best exemplified by the entirely improvised "bonjour" sequence.) As a consequence, whereas many of Lelouch’s films appear painfully under-rehearsed and overly sentimental, Itinéraire d'un enfant gaté feels entirely natural throughout, offering a convincing and deeply moving portrait of a man torn between his love of solitude and his love of people. This is also one of Lelouch’s funniest and most poetic films. The awkward rapport between Sam Lion and his unwilling protégé Albert Divivier (played to perfection by the talented Richard Anconina) manages to be both touching and hilarious. Meanwhile, the exotic location filming (which takes in San Francisco, Tahiti, Zimbabwe, Cologne and Singapore) gives the film a striking visual beauty, arousing in the spectator the kind of irresistible wanderlust which is tormenting the film’s main protagonist. For his part in this film, Jean-Paul Belmondo won the best actor award at the 1989 Césars, in spite of the fact that he had previously publicly stated he would refuse the award. In his view, only the cinema-going public had the right to accord such honours to those who worked in the film industry, not some elitist minority. It has been suggested that this stance may have been motivated by the actor’s antipathy for Cesar Baldaccini, the man who designed the award trophy, who was a contemporary of his father (the sculptor Paul Belmondo). Another piece of trivia: Belmondo’s own son, Paul, appears briefly in the film, playing his character as a young man. © James Travers 2003 Write a review for this film... |
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