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La Soif de l'or
1993 Comedy
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Director:
Gérard Oury
Starring: Christian Clavier, Tsilla Chelton, Catherine Jacob, Philippe Khorsand, Marine Delterme |
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Summary
Urbain Donnadieu’s first love is money. It’s also his second, third and fourth love.
The only reason he married – a tax inspector named Fleurette – was to evade a fine for
tax evasion. For several years, he has been stealing money from his construction
company and buying gold bars with his ill-gotten gains. His plan is to deposit all
this wealth in a Swiss Bank, where neither his wife – whom he is about to divorce – nor
the French State can get at it. Accompanied by his money-grabbing grandmother Zézette,
Urbain heads off for Switzerland, with his gold concealed in the walls of a model house
on the back of a trailer. Unfortunately, his scheme is threatened by his wife and
his embittered ex-chauffeur, who are determined to get his money at any cost...
Credits
 More French Comedy |
Review
The deadly sin of avarice is the subject of this zany Gérard Oury comedy.
Molière it certainly isn’t but Oury manages at least to provide a respectable eighty
minutes of good family entertainment. Whilst it isn’t in the league of the director’s
earlier great comedies –
La Grande vadrouille (1965), etc – Oury still
knows how to make an audience laugh and La Soif de l’or
is just one long sequence of hilarious comic set-pieces. Admittedly, a few
of the jokes are laboured and repetitive, and a few plot ideas – such as Urbain chasing
after a girl at the risk of losing his fortune – don’t make sense. The casting is
also a disappointment. Oury’s film comedies really need a great comic performer
- someone like Bourvil, Louis de Funès or Pierre Richard – to provide a focal point.
Although Christian Clavier does a reasonably good job, he’s hardly up to the task, and
without much help from a pretty undistinguished supporting cast (Catherine Jabob is just
plain irritating), La Soif de l’or lacks that
magical spark which lights up Oury’s more successful comedies.
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