On Aura Tout Vu aka Now We’ve Seen It All by Francis Veber - Eight out of 10

On Aura Tout Vu aka Now We’ve Seen It All by Francis Veber

Eight out of 10

This comedy was destined to be forgotten until this note has resurrected it – with our ‘outlandish’(to quote the silly counsellor in the impeachment trial of the world’s most repellant buffoon) audience, the multitude of readers will propel this to the top of the charts… this is only a joke, alas – and although this is not on the list of Best Comedies Ever – for that, you should consult our site, http://realini.blogspot.ro/ - it has some mirthful, blissful moments and furthermore, the idea is excellent, if executed sloppily at times, as in the second part that peters out into irrelevance to some extent and if not that, then it is almost certainly a cliché development in which they all live happily after…no it is not this either, but somehow, some of the actions of the personages seem to be in the déjà vu class, though the owner of the villa shocks with her decision to partake in the profits of the sex industry and go along with the project…

The main theme is splendid and so relevant for the movie industry or the screen trade, as the magnificent William Goldman – winner of two Oscars for historical, masterpieces All the President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid – called it in the title of his magnum opus Adventures in the Screen Trade, with the idea that those involved, especially the marginalized, forgotten, sometimes talented, but not famous ones, become prostitutes in selling their services in degrading circumstances …we could argue about that – Martin Scorsese seems to have made the point recently and Ricky Gervais joked on it in the monologue at the recent Golden Globes, where he mentioned the Disney Park like motives of cartoon based films and multiple sequels, but then he scolded the greatest director alive for going where he should not get in, because of his ‘stature’.

Pierre Richard, a legendary French comedian of extraordinary magnitude – one film where his outstanding talent is evident is Un Profil Pour Deux http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/04/un-profil-pour-deux-aka-mr-stein-goes.html - has the role of Francois Perrin, the hero of the narrative, in love with Christine Lefebvre aka equally gifted Miou-Miou, who gets involved in a rather spectacular charade, in which the script of his friend, Henri Mercier, is taken up by a pornographer, the ravishing Jean- Pierre Marielle as Bob Morlock, who is ready to make a film with the altered in the extreme script, now called La Vaginale, most appropriately, given that in the first few seconds, the maid takes the broom she using to inset it in her anus, to the horror of those who read the ‘modified’ scenario…

The most abhorred individual is Christine, so disappointed in the man she loves that she would take vehement action, so forceful that it becomes hilarious at moments, such as when she decides to join the cast of the pornographic film, to impress upon the hopeless Francois the extent to which he is humiliating himself, when directing such a carnal production, and he is so terrified of the prospect that his lover would have sex on the set that he tries everything to avoid this eventuality, even if she insists when she sees she cannot force him to abandon the project, after reading Moliere in the nude, in front of Morlock, or when she makes him so ashamed, by queuing in front of a cinema with porn in the program and talking loudly, at times shouting, about ‘double penetration’ and other terms from the poster of the Pipeuses or whatever the name of the sex feature was…

Even if this is not of the same magnitude as Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, as one of the ten best comedies ever made, it is entertaining…well, at times anyway