Coup de torchon

Plot synopsis:
In a little town in French West Africa in 1938, Lucien Cordier is the only policeman. Unable or unwilling to impose his authority, he is treated with scorn by everybody. His sexy wife Huguette has brought a lover, Nono, to live openly with them, claiming he is her brother. Lucien fancies the mischievous young bride Rose, but lets her brutal husband beat her in the street unchallenged. The head of the timber company, Vanderbrouck, daily insults him for all to see. And the bane of his life is a pair of slimy pimps, who flout the law and enjoy humiliating him.
It is the pimps that take him to the brink, so he gets on a train to consult his superior Chavasson, who tells him to act forcefully. On the train home is the attractive new teacher for his town, Anne, who he warms to immediately. Once back, he catches the two pimps alone and, after shooting both dead, throws the corpses in the river. When Chavasson learns of this, he rushes down to question Lucien, who says it was in effect Chavasson who killed them. Having outwitted his boss and removed his prime tormentors, he starts on the others who have made his life a misery. Vanderbrouck is dropped in a privy and Rose's husband, like the pimps, is shot dead and thrown in the river. When his servant retrieves his master's body and brings it back to the house, Lucien has to kill the man too.
Catching Nono peeping at Anne in her shower, he beats him up in the street. Then he steals the money which his wife had been saving up in order to leave him and goes off to see the newly widowed Rose. His wife and Nono, reckoning that he is going to abscond with Rose and the money, storm round there and in self defence Rose shoots both dead. Lucien gives her the money and tells her to get away fast. All he has left in life is Anne, to whom he confesses his general malaise and specific crimes. She is ready to accept him but he says he is now incapable of love. In the closing shot, he is alone under a tree caressing a revolver.

Tags: psychedelic, humor, murder

Review:
It's surreal, funny, tragic, strange, and somehow all holds together.Noiret is wonderful, and a great foil for Huppert, with his hang-dog looks and understated acting.
Bertrand Tavernier has taken the novel "TOP 1280" by Jim Thompson set in North Carolina and produced a riveting French film noir set in Senegal in 1938.
Tavernier in his comments about the film on the DVD talks about the change in the light in the late afternoon in west Africa.
Isabelle Huppert who plays the mistress of Cordier with intensity and humor and the other actors make this a must see film.
This is French film noir at it's best..
BT is a genius.Every moment is pure gold, every second to be treasured.Like the best detective stories ever written, the puzzle is the least of the viewer's concerns.
Brutal, darkly humorous and brilliantly done film noir.
After reading some of the reviews on here, I felt compelled to write one myself simply because it seems most of the people who reviewed this film did not read the book it was based on (POP 1280 by Jim Thompson).
Some found it astonishing that one would actually seek out this book in the first place (including the director), but I happen to be a Jim Thompson junkie and I would say POP 1280 stands as his best work in the "psycho-lawman" sub-genre that he single-handedly created.
This is one of the best Thompson adaptations and I highly recommend it, especially if you have read the novel.
I saw this as part of a Jim Thompson quest.The film opens with a solar eclipse, a mythic way perhaps of foreshadowing the eclipse of humanity and values that follows.
The West African setting is only proper in that aspect, like the setting of the Jim Thompson book, it's a doomed dusty limbo blotted out of the map where, in the absence of palpable law or ethos, humans are allowed to be the lowest they can be.
Thompson had a dark view of humanity, for his own reasons, and for his protagonists, his crazed sheriffs and murderous sociopaths, he seems to reserve a last word that justifies their existence.It's a really funny film, as a comedy it works marvels, and I like how Tavernier shifts the tone light to dark, goofy to perverse.But what about Codier, the policeman of the small African town at the edge of the desert?
Another reviewer reads in him a deranged figure of destiny that smites down people who deserve it, a vengeful Jesus placed on this earth not to save souls but to release them.
If the film was a thriller it might have not worked, but I saw an absurd comedy foremost, and the laughter of that amoral universe is also echoed in Codier himself.When he goes on on his little soliloquis on existence, Tavernier reaches for a solemn tone that seems strange at first, but at least we can understand that this murderous buffoon is no better than anyone else around him.
As a human being he's pathetic, but as a movie character I find him fascinating to watch.
Looking at the slew of negative comments that this movie has racked up I can't help wondering what drew these people to it in the first place.
What drew ME were the names attached to it, Tavernier, one of THE great contemporary French directors, Phillipe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert, two all-time GREAT French actors.
So I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that all these whingers must have wandered into the movie theater thinking they were going to see Gidget Goes Hawaian or How To Stuff A Wild Bikini in which case it is easy to understand their misgivings.
Lucien is a man of principles, but to say exactly what or why is a mystery.This is what makes Coup de tochon, or Clean Slate, based on the Jim Thompson novel Pop 1280 (mentioned in passing as Pop. 1275 for no good reason at one point in the film), is about this man who is warm, lustful, proud, and perhaps a not entirely bright but not stupid either.
And as played by Philippe Noiret he makes this film compulsively watchable.
He makes Lucien a guy we might like to know or talk to for a little while, until we see the veneer peel away, a fragile man who has been pushed around by his bosses and his wife (Stephan Audran) and in a position with such little power that the only way to bust loose is senseless killing.
As he says, "Would a man with these eyes be a killer?" Tavernier's direction is lax and smooth, jagged with some documentary style and realism (it was shot all on location, and it looks it always), but there's also a distance I felt to many of the scenes, a deliberate attempt to strip down film-noir elements to light absurdism mixed with sardonic tragedy.
There are some great moments, don't get me wrong: the scene with the film screened for the village people at night that gets ruined by a windstorm as the audio keeps playing on with the film cut off and people scrambling for cover; the first killing scene of the pimps where Lucien becomes a larger threat with every passing second leading up to a predictable but still shocking climax; an ending, which I won't mention here.
And yet, I have to give it to Philippe Noiret: in any other film noir he'd be out of place, and yet here, he's perfect..
Bertrand Tavernier once again shows why he's one of his country's most challenging directors with this disturbing dark comedy, loosely adapted from a Jim Thompson novel ('POP 1280') but relocated to French Equatorial Africa just before World War II.
After suffering the indignities of a natural born doormat all his life, he strikes back with a vengeance, slowly descending into a rational madness that commands sympathy while simultaneously provoking moral outrage (at one point he callously murders the innocent native servant who mistakenly witnessed on of his killings).
Tavernier builds the tension from his characters rather than from the plot, using touches of unsettling black humor to further blur the line dividing comedy and tragedy..
It is possible that European viewers are more familiar with the colonial history behind it, though the script is based on an American novel (Pop.1280 by Jim Thompson).
The original story is based in America, but here it is based in a French-African colony in the 1930's.The baseline is a global truth: everybody has his breaking point.
Don't forget to check out the other films by this French director; he often shows he's one of the best!And while you're there: some of the best movies (Tati, Resnais, Truffaut...) ever were made in France; so are some of the worst(DO NOT check out French comedies, they are mostly awful).
When a Man Has to Clean Up. The story is pure trash and that is where the film gets its charm and class from: In a French colony in Africa in 1938, Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) is a policeman in a village which is mostly inhabited by Africans and only a few racist, empty-headed Europeans.
It is actually very witty with many hilarious situations: All the deeply macabre murder scenes and shot downs, a blind man who yells: "Get out of my sight!", or the dodgy relationship between Lucien, his wife, her lover, and Lucien's two mistresses, in addition to the documentary-style steady-cam, makes the whole scenery, admittedly unrealistic and bizarre, but very entertaining and, at the end, a bit thoughtful.
Also, it's always a tremendous delight to watch the grand Philippe Noiret, who sadly passed away not a long time ago..
I've read most of Jim Thompson's novels (The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me), and this story "Pop. 1280" is one of his best.
It would seem a hard novel to adapt to film, but Bertrand Tavernier adapts the story to 1930's Senegal flawlessly, and captures the essence of Jim Thompson's writing better than any other film adaptation I have seen of his books.
Great acting here too; Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert and the rest of the cast are superb and utterly convincing in their roles.
The first part of the film sees Bertrand Tavernier, helped along by Pilippe Noiret's broad acting and more co-operation than was strictly necessary from the rest of the cast and crew, establish again and again and again that Lucien is a doormat.
It's like watching George McFly from "Back to the Future".Then, in the latter and believe it or not better part of the film, Tavernier and Noiret slam on the brakes, skid 180 degrees and show us Lucien going nutzoid, killing off whoever gets or has gotten in his way, safe from suspicion because of his established persona.
The film ends when it ends.I saw a 16mm print which did little for what I suspected was nice, crisp location photography, but it was clear enough Tavernier was trying (with success) to make the remote and somewhat neglected African village look like a bare stage; which, along with the hints of pervasive colonial corruption, was necessary to allow such a piece of conceptual art as "Doormat Goes Nutzoid" to come to life.
This film is an adaptation of an U.S. novel of Jim Tompson.
All his novels are precious like that of Chandler and, almost,of the Great Dashiell HAMMET!The novel is situed in the Kansas, but the film in old french Africa just before the War II.
The characters are so bad as racist without any pity for the black like for each other.To my opinion we must read whole the opus of Jim Tompson and of course Larry Beinheart: "an american hero" or "Wag the dog" with De Niro and Dustin Hoffman .
In Europe the "polard in french" ( novel of investigation) is the best way to know the U.S.A.But it's my opinion, no more!.
Quite a few funny events, but killing several people is not really humorous..
As the film starts, one can quickly make up its mind about whether it's enjoyable to watch or not.
However, just like the description of French comedy, it isn't what it seems.The dark humor, film-noir in a town filled with light, the little rhymes in the dialogues: it's been thought over, earning good ratings from critics.
For some reasons, it felt like watching a play at the theater, as well due to the intense dialogues.However, it fails to capture the attention.
The main character is a corrupt, weak and feckless officer of the law in a small colonial African village.
Burt Reynolds (of all people!) once commented that it was pointless remaking classic films because of the difficulty of improving on them.
Instead Hollywood would be better served by remaking movies that are either good but could be improved or that are unknown or forgotten in the first place.
This French version of a Texas set novel by Jim Thompson(best known for writing the Steve McQueen thriller The Getaway) is a classic example of the second category.
Set in a French African colony (it was filmed in Senegal) in the 1930's, Philipe Noiret in a terrific performance plays a passive police officer who lets everyone push him around until he discovers that a few well placed killings can get him what he wants.
The plot takes a few twists and turns and ends up a satisfying little black comedy/thriller.
I would like to know, honestly, how many people (film lovers, that is), really like the recent remakes of "The Vanishing" or "La Femme Nikita".
But we know no U.S. aging star could act in a Tavernier movie without a fistfight..
written by jim thompson, originally located in Florida, adapted by Tavernier, suspected by american viewers --- does it make sense ?
I know, too many question marks, but there are many excellent movies (films) made out of (below) average novels - "The Informer" or "The Shop on the Main Street" come to mind.
It seems to me that the Hollywood formula for sex and violence has you by the "cojones" and has got to include a lot of music - especially in a "film noir".
As happens on occasion with subtitled foreign films I become confused and perplexed at what appears to be the discrepancy between what the characters are doing and/or involved with and what the subtitles have them saying.
*I was told some time ago that if a foreign film (or an English speaking one) is not wildly popular when first released, but has something appealing that a distributor thinks might make a few bucks then, in some cases, the bottom line rule gets applied and the subtitling job goes out for bids to companies that don't apply standards that are usually applied to movies with more popular pedigree.
It is clear that Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) is very well aware of who and what he is -from the beginning of the film.
The mere fact that he acts in function of his later deeds, makes this film not a "real time" story, but something of a far more mythological nature.
As in many European films, they tell you not just the story, but an Idea behind it.
no, because this is one of the best films ever made, and where you think it should have been set doesn't matter a bit.
and don't be put off by comments of this being about an idiot who finally gets offended and runs amuck, or a serial killer, or that it lacks the suspense a good thriller needs,or that the film is a failed noir; it is a noir that breaks the mold and never tries to insert venetian blinds into colonial Africa.
Lucien (Philippe Noiret) our thickset protagonist is a bit of a beguiling figure.
Something in Lucien finally snaps and he uses his only two advantages to rid the world of his problems; his intelligence and his remote location.Coup de Torchon (1981) takes place "at the edge of civilization" on the outskirts of a French African colony mere months before WWII.
One minute he's shooting a man in the stomach, the next he's genteel with his mistress.At one point Lucien remarks that he is the devil incarnate which while giving him a bit too much credit nevertheless plays into the themes of good and evil in the film.
The story is bookended by a scene where Lucien is acting as a Prometheus-like figure to a group of African children; then by another where he aims his shotgun at one of the same children as a boy stares at him blankly.
I have not read the Thompson novel from which it was drawn, but transplanting a story from the American South to crumbling colonial West Africa alone is inspired.If the film is a comedy, then it did not work me.
That character alone was worth the watch for me, especially a couple of more serious discussions he has.But ultimately what does the film do?
I do know that it makes me want to read the Thompson novel to see what inspired Tavernier to take on this.See what you think, but if you think I'm too harsh on the stupidity of the film, I hope you get the DVD that offers the proposed alternate ending with two monkeys...
Then, sadly, the film seemed to lose its way--mostly because the main character was practically impossible to understand or appreciate.
BUT, as there are so many interesting elements to the film, it's still worth seeing...though it clearly misses the mark.The film follows the actions of an ineffectual policeman in French West Africa just before the Second World War. Lucien (Philippe Noiret) does nothing as sheriff but collect a paycheck and ignore crime.
The murder victims really do 'have it coming' and you want to see Lucien to get away with it.Later, however, the film gets pretty muddled.
First, he ends up killing an innocent guy simply because he knew too much--and it was hard to feel sympathy for Lucien--particularly because before this you did like him a lot because he DID stand up for the black natives--though not obviously so.
Third, I was a psychotherapist and psychology teacher and I STILL had a hard time understanding Lucien--his character, though interesting, made little sense and just confused me.
With a bit of a rewrite, this could have gone from a good and thought-provoking film to a classic.
It begins as a pitch-black comedy, but it stops being funny when Noiret kills a completely innocent person; from that point on, it seems to have nowhere to go but down.
Despite seeing his name mentioned in connection with French cinema for a number of years,I've never had the chance to see a work from auteur Bertrand Tavernier.
Getting set for a poll on the best films of 1981 on ICM,I took a look at French movies from the year,and was thrilled to spot to see Tavernier take on Jim Thompson!,which led to me flying the coup.The plot:1938-A French colony in West Africa.Being one of the few "symbols" of law and order in the colony,police officer Lucien Cordier shows a disregard for the powers which matches the state of his personal life,where his wife Huguette has invited a "fake brother"/lover round to live with them,and Cordier himself tries starting an affair up with Rose Mercaillou.
View on the film:Appearing in Cordier's life like a flower in the desert, Isabelle Huppert gives an impeccable performance as Rose Mercaillou,with Huppert giving Rose pointed petals which get burnt by the simmering Noir frustrations of Cordier.
Stomping round the colony like a crusty warthog, Philippe Noiret gives a magnificent performance as Lucien Cordier.
Wanting to do as little work as possible,Noiret gives Cordier an unsettling casual attitude to fights on the street,and signs of annoyance at even the suggestion of helping out black people in the colony.