Monday 14 January 2008

French Movie Screening: Le Dîner de Cons (The Dinner Game) (1998) on 23rd Jan 2008

Bonjour!

Dear friends, NTU French Society would like to present you the movie Le Dîner de Cons (The Dinner Game). Interested parties, please come and enjoy it.

MOVIE: Le Dîner de Cons (The Dinner Game)

Venue: TR111 (Location : SS4-1-35)
Date: 23rd Jan 2008
Time: 7.00pm (Arrive latest by 7.15pm)

For any questions regarding the movie screening please contact Lang Shuang @ 92300235 or through email: LANG0003@ntu.edu.sg


Hope to see you all there.
Thank you!


Movie Information:

Director: Francis Veber

Writer: Francis Veber (based on his play)

Release Date: 29 April 1999 (Singapore)

Genre: Comedy

Plot Keywords: Dinner Party / Publishing / Dinner / Mistress / Infidelity

Awards: 5 wins & 4 nominations

Language: French with English subtitles

Duration: 81 mins


MOVIE SYNOPSIS:

Nobody in the world can make a farce like the French. Dinner Game is the latest movie from french director Francis Veber, who also did Les Cages Aux Folles (The Birdcage).

Every week, five well to do french businessmen get together for their 'idiot dinner.' Each one invites an idiot that they found the preceding week, and the person who brings the most idiotic person wins.


Jacques Villeret is the idiot, Francois Pignon, a tax man who loves to build and talk about his scale match stick models in his spare time. He totes around pictures of the models he has built, which include the Eiffel Tower and a large number of bridges. This week, he is to be big time publisher Pierre Bronchant's (Thierry Lhermitte) idiot. Unfortunately, things never get that far. Before the dinner, Bronchant unexpectedly hurts his back.

Before he can contact Pignon, Pignon shows up at his apartment. Saying anything else about the plot will ruin the rest of the movie. But this is a french farce, so you can expect one mistake after another, each funnier than the last, and each one cascading upon the last, until you approach the ridiculous.

At one point in the movie, Bronchant's friend arrives, and can't help but laugh uncontrollably at what is going on around him, and you can't help but laugh with him.

Villeret, with his frizzy hair and crazed expressions, is perfect as Pignon. Alexandra Vandernoot (from the Highlander television series), Catherine Frot, and Francis Huster also star.

Dinner Game has very few sets and probably less than 10 speaking parts, but this isn't a simple movie. It relies on Veber's script and Villeret's comic timing to work, and it does work. Pignon, while trying to help, keeps saying and doing the wrong things at the wrong time.

The concept of inviting idiots to dinner seems pretty mean spirited at first, but the ensuing events that occur throughout the entire movie more than make up for the fact that Bronchant is a jerk. But overall, the general tone of the movie is light and fun.
(Reference: http://www.haro-online.com/movies/dinner_game.html)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great work.