Gazon maudit alain chabat biography

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No big laughs, but a good story and brilliant acting. It was nice that it was only just over an hour and a half, cause the madness probably could not have gone on too much more.

Thanks partly to her former association with the comedy troupe Splendid, Josiane Balasko is renowned for her crude, low brow style of comedy, so, given the film's subject matter, you'd think she would serve up another helping of bad taste and tacky clichés (much as she had done in her previous three films).  Things do not bode well when Gazon maudit begins by introducing three stock comedy caricatures - the over-sexed estate agent, the bored housewife and the portly dyke who's a dab hand with a spanner and sink plunger.  But, very quickly, Balasko subverts our expectations and turns what first appears to be a predictable ménage-à-trois farce into a sophisticated romantic comedy that resonates with truth.  Balasko received a César for her screenplay, and rightly so, but her direction is also worthy of praise, as is her sympathetic and amusing portrayal of a spunky lesbian who proves to be a match for any male chauvinistic pig.  Far from being shallow and crude, Gazon maudit impresses as a classy little comedy, a film that was to the 1990s almost what La Cage aux folles had been to the 1970s, thankfully without the crass campery and hideous pantomimic stereotyping.

Admirably supported by two other fine comedic actors, Victoria Abril and Alain Chabat, Josiane Balsko delivers a lively and original comedy that, as well as being tirelessly funny throughout, makes some pretty scathing observations on the way that the prevailing mindset of macho heterosexual superiority inhibits individual freedom and relationships.  Chabat's character is the archetypal Alpha Male, the kind that expects his wife to remain dutifully faithful to him whilst he spends all of his days seducing any female that comes within shouting distance.  His loathing for lesbians is presumably down to the fact that he feels threatened by a woman he knows he cannot possess.  For a man who is a slave to his libido, a gay woman is the ultimate ball-breaker, all the more so if she has the physique of a medium-weight wrestler. 

When the adorable Abril ends up in bed with the butch Balasko we are as shocked as Chabat, but once we begin to see past the stereotypes a far richer study in human behaviour emerges.  These are three characters who have hitherto lived as two-dimensional archetypes, like protagonists in a shoddy primetime sitcom, and are just beginning to understand what their real needs are.  With its recurring bouts of catfights, name calling and head-butts, Gazon maudit may resemble the usual conflict comedy but it is actually a far more substantial piece than this - one in which a group of childish, self-serving individuals develop into compassionate, fulfilled adults as they learn to rise above their prejudices.  In between the outlandish comic outbursts there are some moments of surprising depth and poignancy, most notably the scene in which Chabat receives a few words of wisdom from an ageing prostitute (Catherine Samie).  The ending may perhaps bring one twist too many, but overall Gazon maudit is a well-conceived comedy with far more substance than your average mainstream French crowdpleaser - the best thing Josiane Balsko has contributed to the art of cinema so far.

He ends up crashing into the pigs' mud pond of a farm where two beautiful blonde girls work, takes some of the goat cheese that they produce and shoves it in his face, insults them and women in general, and even suggests he'll do things with a goat... I find much more vulgarity in, mmmh, let's say, the "American Pie" pictures - even if they don't show nudity - than in Gazon Maudit.

2.

But as I kept watching it, this movie kept getting crazier and crazier. Nevertheless, the movie is funny, it's done with great taste and sensibility, and even though the characters are not 100% belivable, they are not stereotypical. I gave a rating of 6 because it's not a masterpiece. French films are usually an acquired taste and this one is no exception.

None of their lives will ever be the same again.After learning of her husband's infidelities, a housewife invites an itinerant lesbian to move in with them. This movie is funny. The ending strongly hints at him starting a gay relationship.