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Simply A Masterpiece

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

If you know Sacha Guitry's immortal "Le Poison", this movie may seem a little disconcerting to you. It is a fairly faithful retelling of Guitry's astonishingly cynical story, but with many of the sharp corners rounded. Not a betrayal of the original, but a different, typically Jean Becker, way of telling the same story. The wife is far more developed as a character, and we are given reasons to feel sorry for her on occasion. Josiane Balasko, who plays the part, is also a first-rate actress. Braconnier, played by the equally gifted actor Jacques Villeret, is not as aggressive as Michel Simon's character; he borders on the timid. Humanity as Jean Becker sees it, in other words, and not how Sacha Guitry saw it.If you don't know Guitry's film, you can enjoy this for what it is, a funny and yet warm comedy. If you do know Guitry's film, the écart between the two will bring out nicely what was typical of/unique to Guitry.A strong recommendation for both movies.

It's a french film, located in the french countryside, with that unique french feeling that stays right between drama and humor: one hour and a half that run like fresh water. Not a chef-d'oeuvre, but really pleasant. One thing to appreciate is that characters are as natural as it is in everyday life, and the plot seems to come out of a province's newspaper as well. 7 out of 10.

I liked this film, which doesn't take itself as seriously as many contemporary French films do. It may never reach the USA - too bad. The humor is reminiscent of Bill Forsyth, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam et al with a setting in dreary but beautiful French countryside instead of Scotland. A year after seeing it, many little comic details flash back...the coroner accidentally swilling the mole-killer ("taupicide") laced glass of wine by accident...the vicious wife ambling across the street threatening motorists with her umbrella...the shrewish pharmacist being convinced to sell the poison...the nasty tempered goat farmer muttering "la salope!" under his breath as milk runs out the bottom of his punctured bucket...the farmer and schoolteacher walking around oblivious to the April Fool's fish taped to their backs...

If you want to have a look at life in the French countryside in the seventies, this movie is for you. It's a good illustration of this forgotten world during which everything looked so naive and pain. The film is a remake of a French movie classic. It looks anachronistic compared to sophisticated French movies such as "Le pacte des loups". Its subject, its cast (most of the actors comes back from the seventies and the eighties...), its music by Pierre Bachelet, its direction... Everything looks out of time. It may be pleasant, but at the same time a useless effort to revive a movie genre which belongs to the past and which was so well made at the time. Funny, but useless.