Les falseuses (1974)

Directed by: Bertrand Blier | 113 minutes | drama, comedy, crime | Actors: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, Christian Alers, Michel Peyrelon, Gérard Boucaron, Jacques Chailleux, Eva Damien, Dominique Davray, Isabelle Huppert, Marco Perrin, Jacques Rispal, Claude Vergues

‘Les Valuses’ is a typical male film from a certain time. Politically correct thinking is certainly not always favorable for the dramatic content of a book or film or in this case a book adaptation, but there are limits. This road movie is from the Stone Age before women’s emancipation, in which men and their egos are indisputably the center of the world. With some relief you can see that progress in the sense of modified ideas does indeed mean progress in this case. Just take the way they treat Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou). After a confrontation with her boss, the owner of a hair salon, they not only confiscate his gun, but also take her with them. They give her to a shady figure to get a car. This isn’t all that fresh, but then they keep trying in all sorts of ways to get her excited about sex and are angry that their sublime physical exertion leaves her indifferent. They don’t understand it at all, but it is clear that it is her and not them. The latter does not even occur to them, so hopeless.

But the film’s biggest flaw is that it seems to have been created in the process. You can blame the aimless lives of these two bums for his lack of direction, but for the viewer drifting from one scam to another and the various sex adventures simply takes too long. Sometimes it is about their mutual camaraderie, sometimes about their complete ignorance of what women like now and now and then there is suddenly a lot of slapstick without an understandable transition, but above all without a clear reason why.

It is striking that the relatively short appearance of Jeanne Moreau is the highlight of the film. She plays an older woman who has just come out of prison and she does it horribly well. For the two gentlemen and the viewer she remains a great, silent mystery, her presence is inescapably powerful. The relationships between the two younger actors and this grande dame are well taken care of. In the inevitable threesome, she is the boss, the two men her disciples, and that shows the difference in acting perfectly. Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere are not doing badly, but she is the star. ‘Les Valuses’ is in every way a hopelessly dated film with a funny scene here and there and quite entertaining overall, but little more than that.