"The Dinner Game" (Language - French) (1998) - Movie Review

There is a fine line to maintain for a comedy film to consume its abuse in ease and comfort. Amongst the spitting spikes of words of sarcasm and derailment over a character, it is a slim area to work upon to make it comedic and not assassinating one’s character or to numb us well ahead to accept it. A drama generally blossoms in a comedy when there is a unique friendship forms in between two unlikely people. It is François Pignon (Jacques Villeret) and Pierre Brochant (Thierry Lhermitte). I am not sure whether they become friends though. The reason is that Pierre and his friends address François Pignon as idiot so many times; we begin to believe in it and forget the kindness, naïve and consideration of that person.

Pierre Brochant is a rich publisher who gathers for dinner with his friends and their invitees every Wednesday. Every one needs to bring one invitee. It is a strange dinner wherein they hunt for “idiots” as they say and let them talk during the dinner. Then make fun of them behind their backs. A cruel game. Pierre with his tip from friend invites Pignon who makes model out of matches. His day job is working at Finance Ministry and with bubbling happiness unaware of the reason he is originally called upon goes to Pierre’s place and finds out that he is suffering from a back ache. Pierre calls off his dinner plans only to be bungled by the mishaps Pignon does with devotion and unrelenting trait to make Pierre’s crumbling life more miserable.

Is the joke on Pierre or Pignon? It is on both and I was not laughing. Pierre is the yuppie who has ego as the size of Mt. Everest and no evidence of consideration or kindness. The dinner game obviously is wrong, demeaning and psychotic. But by making Pignon do unbelievable acts of dumbness, the film turns out into justifying the dinner. It does not seem inadvertent but the suffering Pierre goes through of Pignon’s carelessness authenticates the action of Pierre. And do we need to enjoy the life dissipating for Pierre? Everything in the film in the name of fun abuses it. If there is a dark ending with no redemption from either side, it would have made me feel better, but there is confrontation and Pierre’s lessons learned philosophy arrives only to be trumped again by Pignon. That is the only joke which made some sense when both the parties are aware of each other’s opinion.

I was easily able to notice why it would have created a comedy riot purely on the basis of dialogue delivery. Knowing French would have made this funny for its timing of the actors. I observed it in the spontaneity and the reflex of each actor’s dialogues. The two leads comprising arrogant Pierre by Thierry and naïve dumb Pignon by Jacques carries a weird chemistry where they tango with imperfections in their characters. There is a friend of Pierre named Juste Leblanc played by Francis Huster. Leblanc is the former lover of Pierre’s wife from whom he thieved her. And he is forgiving and kind enough to visit Pierre. Huster is magnificent as a long friend forgiving and reuniting but it crumbles immediately when he laughs uncontrollably at the sufferings of Pierre. Both acting and comedy fails in those sequences.

Director Francis Veber provides a comedy with a character flaw in it. The humour is cruel and the characters are a dark combination of reality and fiction. Pignon is more fictional in the series of constant fiascos he gives out. And there is the five minutes in the end where he becomes in control of a situation and smart. This margin of fluctuation deteriorates furthermore the film’s trade of drama and comedy on dissecting a person’s integrity, kindness and naivety. Pierre is real and his redemption is opportunistic. “The Dinner Game” is hypocritical in its presentation. Either it should never have tried to explain itself of its dark comedy or choose a story with different characters. I remember “In the Company of Men” which is demonically comical. We see satire and dark humour in an evil form. It never shuns from its content. In “The Dinner Game” it tries to explain its nature and tone of it in the end which makes it all the more hurtful.