Film Forum

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
France, 1981
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Philippe Noiret, Stéphane Audran
Approx. 128 min. DCP.

In pre-WWII Bourkassa, a fictional one-cow outpost in French colonial Senegal, spineless lawman Philippe Noiret is humiliated by wife Stéphane Audran, pushed around by two local pimps, and bullied by the military commandant in Dakar… though he still finds time for some hanky panky with the new schoolteacher and more-than-willing married woman Isabelle Huppert. But then the worm turns, as he opts for a “clean slate.” Blackly comic adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1964 American pulp novel Pop. 1280.

Restored in 4K from the original negative by Studiocanal at L'Image Retrouvée, with color correction by Jean Achache on behalf of Bertrand Tavernier. Funding by the CNC.

Presented with support from the Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

Reviews

“STYLISHLY WELL-CRAFTED AND THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING…
EMBELLISHED WITH BLACK WIT.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out

“Bertrand Tavernier’s rowdy, broad, unsettling moral tale...follows screwball comedy out to its other side as madness: you’re never sure whether what you’re watching is high spirits or insanity... Working with two veterans of the French “tradition of quality,” set designer Alexandre Trauner and co-scenarist Jean Aurenche, Tavernier created one of the freshest French films in years it has wit, dash, and fiber.”
– Dave Kehr

“With equal touches of Kafka, Genet, and Beckett, director Bertrand Tavernier’s brilliant adaptation takes place in an ethical No Man’s Land... It might seem impossible to make a humorous movie that seriously embraces nihilism. But in the hands of a master like Tavernier, even ambiguity can be entertaining.”
– Michael Dare

“...Human, lively, and French... A film in the tradition of Chabrol and Renoir, despite
being an adaptation of a very American Jim Thompson crime story.”
– Volker Schlöndorf