La Chèvre
Short description
A wealthy businessman's daughter, Marie Bens, has vanished while travelling in Mexico. Private detective Campana is hired to find her, but his search leads nowhere, so the company's psychologist proposes an unusual idea: send someone whose luck is as catastrophic as the missing woman's, on the theory that misfortune will lead them to the same places. The man chosen is François Perrin, an unremarkable accountant with a rare talent for attracting disaster. Paired with the stubborn, increasingly exasperated Campana, he sets out across Mexico, and their journey fills up with accidents and coincidences that carry them, against all expectation, towards the young woman.
La Chèvre is a French-Mexican adventure comedy from 1981, directed and written by Francis Veber. It was the first feature he directed, coming after a career writing screenplays for other filmmakers. Pierre Richard plays the hapless Perrin and Gérard Depardieu plays Campana, whose contrasting temperaments drive the comedy. The supporting cast includes Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Corynne Charbit, Michel Robin and André Valardy. It runs 94 minutes and was produced by Gaumont International, Conacite Uno and Fideline Films.
Audiences rate the film positively: it holds 7.3 out of 10 on IMDb based on roughly 12,000 votes, and 7.1 out of 10 on TMDB. A small sample of critics' reviews gives it 5.5 out of 10, a markedly cooler response than that of the general public, whose ratings reflect the film's lasting popularity as a comedy of mismatched partners.
What's left behind the scenes
- Initially, the roles of Campana and Perrenin were to be played by Lino Ventura and Jacques Villeret, respectively, but Ventura refused to appear in a film with Villeret. Furthermore, the actor was unable to agree with the film's producer, Alain Poire, on the amount of his fee.
- Mexican actor Sergio Calderón, who played the role of a prisoner in the film, also played the role of a bartender in the 1991 American remake.
- Francis Veber's second film as a director.
- In one scene in the Mexican jungle, Richard's character is kidnapped by a gorilla (in reality, an American stuntman in a gorilla suit). Interestingly, these primates do not inhabit the American continent.
- Gérard Depardieu was stung by a scorpion during filming.
- Most of the Mexican actors in the film did not speak any French. They delivered their lines in Spanish, and during editing, their characters were dubbed by French actors.
- From the very beginning, Gérard Depardieu wanted to play the role of François Perrin, to which the director refused. In retaliation, the actor hindered the filming process: threw tantrums, went on a binge, and so on.
- The scene with the wasp was very difficult for Pierre Richard. Despite the stinger being removed, no one on the set suspected that the wasp could still sting. The actor had to play the scene while enduring bites from the insect.
- A literal translation of the title is “Goat,” fr. La Chèvre, which means “Bait,” “Live Bait,” and there is also the French idiomatic expression fr. “rendre chèvre” – “to exasperate.”
- The names of the classic characters – Perenna and Campana, played by Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu in a whole series of French comedies, were used by director Francis Veber for the heroes of Jean Reno and Patrick Bruel in his comedy “Jaguar.”
- In 1991, an American remake of “The Fugitive” (Pure Luck) was filmed by Nadia Tass. Francis Veber, who was present on set as a consultant, first encountered “American-style political correctness.” Veber wanted to cast a Latino actor for the role of the villain, as he found him the most talented, but this idea had to be abandoned. Nadia Tass explained that portraying a negative character as being of Mexican origin could anger the Latino community. This story inspired Veber to create the comedy “Chameleon” (2001) with the same Depardieu.
- Mexican actor Jorge Luke, who plays the bandit Juan Lárbal in the film, appears as the police chief in another French comedy filmed in Mexico – “Revenge of the Feathered Serpent” (1984).
- This is the first film in the comedic trilogy of the Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu duo. The actors also starred together in “The Papa's” (1983) and “The Runaways” (1986).
- In 1981, the film became a leader in the French box office, surpassing such hits as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "The Professional."
- Before this film, Pierre Richard had already played a character named François Perrin in "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe" (1972), "Return of the Tall Blond Man" (1974), and "The Toy" (1976) – his first joint project with Francis Veber.
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