RIDICULE (director: Patrice Leconte; screenwriters: Remi Waterhouse/Eric Vicaut/Michel Fessler; cinematographer: Thierry Arbogast; cast: Charles Berling (Baron Gregoire Ponceludon de Malavoy), Jean Rochefort (Marquis de Bellegarde), Fanny Ardant (Madame de Blayac), Judith Godreche (Mathilde de Bellegarde), Bernard Giraudeau (Abbot de Vilecourt), Urbain Cancelier (Louis XVI), 1996-Fr.)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
For a film that prides itself on its use of wit to show what the nobility and their King Louis XV1 were like during 1783, just before the infamous French Revolution, I would have expected to be more than dazzled by these nobles with their silver-tongued wit, cutting each other to bits and pieces with their razor-sharpened retorts. Instead, I found myself more taken with the history aspect of this good looking costume spectacle and was not especially amused by the barbs. In fact, I found the film rather anti-septic, not a particularly moving dramatic experience. Overrated by some of the critics, who seemed to fall for this French film's farcical intentions, deeming it intellectual in the broadest sense of what is intellectual, while failing to construe how ordinary and dispassionate the characters were.
The art of ridicule was the sword used by those who expected to gain favor with the king and his court, with the hopes of having enough wit so that they won't have their life ruined by failing to respond to someone else's comments in a suitable manner. It was their way of fighting for their position in life.
The plot of the movie centers around the serious-minded Baron Ponceludon's (Berling) attempt to get royal backing on a needed drainage project, which would help cultivate the swamp land he owns by getting rid of the mosquitoes breeding there and help the peasants who work for him have a better life. He is a French lord, trained as an engineer but a noble of modest means, who must now ride by horse to Versailles and learn to play the delicate games of wit at a place where the aristocrats show an indifference to social concerns other than the ones that please their own vanity. He comes here solely to raise the money he needs for his life's work.
Part fiction and part history, this satire, as directed by Patrice Leconte (Monsieur Hire/The Hairdresser's Wife), is not completely absorbing in its romantic tale or as drama. The history part seemed to be accurate enough, depicting the corruption of the king's court and his placement of more importance on vacuous wit than genuine ideas. The honest engineer from the country is quickly disheartened by what he sees in Versailles, where you get the king's ear by trickery, or sleeping in the right bed, or by deception. To meet the evasive king, you have to make a name for yourself in Versailles through one of those methods.
The idealistic Ponceludon finds a local nobleman, who treats his wounds when he is robbed on the road to Versailles, Bellegarde (Jean Rochefort). He thinks Ponceludon might have some chance of succeeding in being witty and offers him lessons of how to survive in Versailles, such as, "Don't laugh at your own jokes and never laugh with your mouth open", "Call puns the death of wit"; and remember,"The soul of wit is to know one's place." This nobleman who will sponsor him, something needed to get into the right circles at Versailles, also has a beautiful and intelligent daughter, Mathilde (Judith), but who is prepared to marry an older noble, whose plan is to gain access to her wealth. Now you know she's going to fall in love with our hero; but, in between, Ponceludon courts the seductively attractive and treacherous Countess de Blayac (Fanny), as he is committed to get help for his swamp project anyway he could. His problem with winning her over, is that her main man is the arrogant and nasty master of wit himself, the clergyman Abbot de Vilecourt (Giraudeau); and, of course, the rivalry between these two wits will culminate in a gentleman's pistol duel, that is, after a series of dueling witticisms are hurled back and forth. After his battles with the nobles, it is still challenging to meet the insulated king, busy living the "good life," who is just as indifferent as the nobles are to the plight of the common man.
What elevates this film above merely showing how obviously stupid and petty the nobles were, is that it stresses how the nobles had to use language to survive in that atmosphere. Language therefore became a source of power for them if used in conjunction with wit, as their class status only gave them a ticket into the arena of power, so to speak. This film is also about a moral dilemma for our good-hearted hero. He must choose either what is morally correct or to sell himself out for his project, which he considers as something that is more important than how he might be perceived.
The acting or the story did not excite me enough to think that this clever film was anything special, except as a mildly diverting farce, which could be, at best, considered only as a film that had its moments of being a clever satire. But mostly, it is a predictable French farce, with enough one-dimensional characters in it to fill the court of Versailles with retorts that would pale next to those heard in an average schoolyard in urban America on a daily basis.
REVIEWED ON 2/18/99 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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