Cynicism on Display at Film Forum, Courtesy Director Bertrand Tavernier and Pulp Laureate Jim Thompson

“Coup de Torchon” (1981), set to be feted with a one-week revival at Film Forum starting December 1, has to be among the most cynical films ever made. Granted, the competition is stiff and, given the source material, “Pop. 1280” by pulp laureate Jim Thompson, you can’t fault director and screenwriter Bertrand Tavernier for erring on the side of the sardonic, the blasé, and the weary. Still, even the most hard-boiled misanthrope will be taken aback by the ennui that dominates the picture.Thompson’s novel takes place in the fictional American town of Pottsville. Tavernier transposes the location of “Pop. 1280” to Bourkassa, an invented township in Senegal. The environs are similarly tattered, though the vestiges of French colonialism add their own distinctive flavor to the notion of “dead end.” There are murmurs of war — the time frame is 1938 — but the populace can’t be bothered. The heat, the natives, the misery, and, most of all, the inescapable boredom: The rest of the world is far away.Primary among the apathetic is Lucien Cordier (the inestimable Phillippe Noiret), Bourkassa’s one and only officer of the law. Cordier wears his duties lightly and no uniform whatsoever, shambling around the village all but indistinguishable from the surrounding populace. One measure of his lassitude is the disdain by which all and sundry treat him: his wife, his brother-in-law, the local pimps, you name them. The new school teacher, Anne (Irène Skobline), is initially respectful, but quickly gets wise to Cordier’s lack of a moral center.Cordier doesn’t much care, until he does — kind of. After putting up with physical and verbal abuse from Leonelli (Gérard Hernandezé) and Paulo (Daniel Langley), the aforementioned procurers, Cordier escorts them to the river, ridicules them at gunpoint, and shoots them. The manner in which he kills them — it’s no big deal, really — confirms the dawdling rhythm of the movie even as it signals a change in Cordier’s behavior. His actions betray a new man and a clean slate, the latter of which is, for those not conversant in French, the English translation of “Coup de Torchon.”Really, though, nothing much changes except the body count. Cordier’s relationship with his wife Huguette (Stéphane Audran) maintains its own peculiar brand of cordiality and contempt. As for Huguette’s relationship with her brother Nono (Eddy Mitchell) — well, yeah, it’s weird. Given their level of intimacy, they either aren’t related or else something altogether more distasteful is afoot. Cordier repeatedly begs Huguette for conjugal relations, but he isn’t too put off by her rebuffs. Just so long as there’s roasted duck and a baguette on the table….Besides, there’s the company of Rose Marcaillou (Isabelle Huppert) to enjoy. Given that Monsieur Macaillou (Victor Garrivier) is cruel to both Rose and various Senegalese, Cordier kills him, snip-snap. The newly widowed Rose is fairly sanguine about this turn of events, and, in turn, beds Cordier. And so it goes in Bourkassa. The stray official or family member who arrives from out of town in order to investigate this missing individual or that murder victim is played for a sucker by Cordier. Then again, given the gullibility of these outsiders, they’re pretty much asking for it.How effective an apologue is “Coup de Torchon” on the failings of colonialism? Tavenier stated that metaphorical means were “the only way to speak about humiliation, racism, and power.” So why did he shuck metaphor in the picture’s final moments, in which a tut-tut moralism takes precedence? The change in tone feels more like the result of a filmmaker keeping an eye on the clock rather than on the exigencies of character. Besides, we kind of like the Bogart-esque Cordier and the effervescent Rose, considerable foibles notwithstanding. When they begin speechifying or acting against type, we begin to not like Tavernier, who has seen fit to exercise his own will at the expense of a story well told. Now tell me that’s not cynical.

Cynicism on Display at Film Forum, Courtesy Director Bertrand Tavernier and Pulp Laureate Jim Thompson

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