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Waste of time

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is a sort of « Glengarry glen gross » in France and in action. But the similarities stops here as this movie is pretty awful : Yes, i know that Pacino or Lemon are unique but those french salesmen have however absolutely nothing for them: : no personality, no method, no product. The story focuses especially about a new seller, so weak, so spineless who drags his feet, stays unfocused to not say dumb ! I expected also a lot of fun or emotion with Benoit Poelvoorde but he isn't the star here as he is only the manager of this poor team. Sure there was something to do with his inadequate teaching or the parallel he felt with the excellence of leadership of « Obi Wan » in the « Bridge of Kwai river » but the movie is so depressive that it's useless. Even when the movie moves to the rainy and gray north to the sunny south, it doesn't get better. Maybe there are two funny moments (the pool session or his cowardice) but they don't last and there's a lot of useless characters (Bideau for example). In conclusion, this movie is as crap as the book they try to sell !

I wonder why Michel Duchaussoy who used to work with such directors as Claude Chabrol and Alain Jessua has agreed to take part in this vulgar comedy.The real funny moments are few and far between ,and however ,the subject (the salesmen trying to send their lousy books to naive people) was ideal -one can only dream of what a Billy Wilder could have done with it.And the excerpts from "bridge on the river Kwai" do not bring anything at all except that David Lean was great. Nothing is here.

I just watched "les portes de la gloire" on DVD (no special need to see it in a theatre, this is not the big picture on wonderful sets !). I actualy give it a 10/10, that maybe doesn't mean the same for me than for others : it means first that I entered the movie, it means it was worth watching, it means it was not stupid (or stupid enough to make think)... It means it is a real movie. "Les portes de la gloire" is about a few salesman (we say "VRP" in france, I don't know the name in english : a saleseman "on the road"). They sell books about we-don't-realy-know-what, something like an encyclopedia. These men force unemployed people (for instance) to buy useless books. It is not a realy good job. They all are a little stupid, of course. Well, what else can I say ? The characters work fine, there is a lot of funny situations, and there is no "happy end" : nobody gets rich suddenly or start another job, the men stay what they are. The real good point here is how much we can believe it is not caricature, but the real world. Salesman movies could become a "genre" with stuff like this movie or "comment réussir quand on est con et pleurnichard" (Michel Audiard). Poelvorde is, as always, brilliant.

The actor who played the main character (the new salesman) is pretty good! There s only actually two good jokes in this movie, the scenario is as bad as simple! I think this movie is for the ultimate fan of Benoît Poelvoorde (C est arrive pres de chez vous, his best film for the moment)!