The Dinner Game (, ; literally "Dinner of Fools") is a 1998 French comedy film written and directed by Francis Veber, adapted from his play "Le Dîner de Cons". It became that year's top-grossing French film at the French box office (second overall behind "Titanic").
Plot.
Pierre Brochant, a Parisian publisher, attends a weekly "idiots' dinner", where guests, who are modish, prominent Parisian businessmen, must bring along an oblivious "idiot." The ideal "idiot" is usually one who is obsessed by a ridiculous hobby or theme, whom the other guests can ridicule subtly all evening without the idiot catching on. At the end of the dinner, the evening's "champion idiot" is selected among the businessmen.
With the help of an "idiot scout", Brochant manages to find a "gem", François Pignon, a sprightly employee of the Finance Ministry (which Brochant, a tax cheat, loathes). Pignon has a passion for building matchstick replicas of famous landmarks. Shortly after inviting Pignon to his home, Brochant is suddenly stricken with back pain while playing golf at his exclusive country club. His wife, Christine, leaves him shortly before Pignon arrives at his apartment, as she realizes that he still wants to go to the "idiots' dinner". Brochant initially wants Pignon to leave, but instead becomes reliant on him, because of his back problem and his need to resolve his relationship problems.
He solicits Pignon's assistance in making a series of telephone calls to locate his wife, but Pignon blunders each time, including revealing the existence of Brochant's mistress, Marlene Sasseur (thinking that she is Brochant's sister, since her name sounds like "sa sœur"), to his wife Christine and inviting tax inspector Lucien Cheval to Brochant's house, where Brochant is forced quickly to hide most of his valuables in an attempt to disguise his tax evasion.
In the meantime, Brochant is able to make amends with an old friend, Juste Leblanc, from whom he stole Christine, and through the evening's events is forced to reassess his mistakes. Brochant almost succeeds in reconciling with Christine when Pignon (unprompted) calls her to describe all the efforts Brochant has made that day to straighten out his life, including breaking up with his mistress, reconciling with his best friend, and wanting to make amends to her. A skeptical Christine asks Pignon whether Brochant is with him, coaching him. Though Brochant is next to him--amazed at how gracefully Pignon has managed to describe his repentance to Christine--Pignon lies and says that he left Brochant and is calling from a phone booth. When a softened-up Christine calls Brochant at home to discuss reconciliation, however, true to form, Pignon picks up the phone and Christine hangs up, wrongly convinced that Brochant has manipulated Pignon's eloquent account of Brochant's reformation. The film ends with Brochant again blaming Pignon for ruining his life.
Background.
The play on which the film is based premiered on 18 September 1993 at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris, with a cast including Jacques Villeret as François Pignon, Claude Brasseur as Pierre Brochant, Michel Robbe as Juste Leblanc and Gérard Hernandez as Lucien Cheval, and directed by Pierre Mondy; it was revived the following season before touring to Bayonne, Liege and Marseille. The play continues to be revived.
As the plans of the hitman in Veber's earlier "L'Emmerdeur" were continually thrown off course by a well-meaning idiot, in "Le Dîner de cons", the same relationship occurs, with “Thierry Lhermitte's supercilious publisher having his well-ordered life dismantled by the disastrously eager-to-please Jacques Villeret”. "Le Dîner de cons" ran for over 900 performances on the Parisian stage before being made into a film, so "not surprisingly the pacing and mechanics of the comedy run with dovetailed precision".
With over 9 million tickets sold at the box office, "Le Dîner de cons" was the second most popular film in France in 1998, after "Titanic".
The character name 'François Pignon' occurs in several films of Francis Veber. Previously in "L'Emmerdeur" of 1973 Jacques Brel's character has the same name, as does Pierre Richard's role in "Les Compères" and "Les Fugitifs"; later Daniel Auteuil in "Le Placard", Gad Elmaleh in "La Doublure" and Patrick Timsit in the 2008 re-make of "L'Emmerdeur" are 'François Pignon'.
Besides Cosma's score the film uses the 1961 song "Le temps ne fait rien à l'affaire" by Georges Brassens.
Critical response.
The film was positively received by critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 74% based on 46 reviews, with an average score of 6.8/10. On Metacritic, the film received a score of 73 based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Kemp noted that “in this kind of comic pairing [it] isn't the gravitation of the idiot to the straight guy, which is understandable enough, but the reverse: the fatal delusion on the part of a logical individual, operating on cool self-interest, that even the most unpromising human material can, with a little coaching, be co-opted into the same well-ordered system”. For Kemp the film was stolen by Villeret as Pignon “his balding, spherical head, bug eyes and pudgy little mouth” appearing as “a cross between a giant baby and a less aggressive Zero Mostel. His comic persona also shares something of a baby's abrupt, discontinuous mood swings, and in the film's funniest moments the camera focuses delightedly on his mobile moon-face as it slumps from inane self-satisfaction to lip-quivering dismay”.
Accolades.
At the 1999 César Awards, the film was honored with six nominations, of which it won three. The categories it won were Best Actor for Jacques Villeret, Best Supporting Actor for Daniel Prévost, and Best Screenplay for Francis Veber. It was nominated but did not win for Best Film, Veber as Best Director, and Catherine Frot as Best Supporting Actress.
References.
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