The Dinner Game
1998 · Directed by Francis Veber
Original language: French
- comedy
The story
For Pierre Brochant and his friends, Wednesday is “Idiots' Day”. The idea is simple: each person has to bring along an idiot. The one who brings the most spectacular idiot wins the prize. Tonight, Brochant is ecstatic. He has found a gem. The ultimate idiot, “A world champion idiot!”. What Brochant doesn’t know is that Pignon is a real jinx, a past master in the art of bringing on catastrophes...
What it’s like
Warm, stagey interiors and tidy French apartments in flat, even light, with the camera mostly holding still while people talk and the comedy builds from one awkward silence to the next. The palette is muted and domestic: beige walls, polished wood, a dinner table laid for guests, with the bright exterior of Paris visible only briefly through windows. The sound is light and conversational, lifted now and then by a bouncy, old-fashioned score, and the laughter is what carries it. The pacing is steady and chatty, with escalating mishaps that come in tidy, well-timed bursts. Its tone is gently cruel and affectionate at once, a cozy farce with a sharp edge about vanity and snobbery, and its people shift from smug to humbled as the evening goes sideways. Intensity is very low: mild embarrassment, slapstick mess and verbal barbs, with no violence, gore or sexual content. It suits a relaxed rainy-evening comedy, a comfort rewatch, or a lighthearted night in with friends, and is for people who enjoy character-driven farce and gentle satire of self-regard.
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