Le Dîner de cons

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Le dîner de cons

Directed by	Francis Veber
Produced by	Francis Veber
Written by	Francis Veber
Starring	Thierry Lhermitte Jacques Villeret
Distributed by	Gaumont
Release date(s)	April 15, 1998 in France
Running time	87 min
Language	French
IMDb profile

Le dîner de cons (French: lit. The Idiots' Dinner; international English title: The Dinner Game) is a French film directed by Francis Veber that was released in 1998. It is a cinema adaptation of the drama play of the same name.

1 Plot
2 Full cast
3 Awards
4 External links

[edit] Plot

The Dinner Game is a film for introspection under the guise of a comedy. The movie asks the question: "Is being nice idiotic?". Some people may also argue that the moral of the story is "On est toujours le con de quelqu'un" ("We are always an idiot for somebody").

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Pierre Brochant (Lhermitte), a famous Parisian publisher, attends a weekly "idiots' dinner", where each guest, who are prominent Parisian businessmen (and therefore, it is implied, intelligent), must bring along an "idiot" whom the other invitees can tease. At the end of the dinner the evening's champion idiot is selected. Brochant manages, with the help of a "idiot scout", to find an exceptional idiot: François Pignon (Villeret), a Finance Ministry employee who is crazy about building replicas with matchsticks. But things start to go haywire when Pierre's wife leaves him in the middle of things.

Left alone in his apartment, the suave, cultured Pierre injures his back, and instead of going to the dinner with François Pignon, has to ask François to help him. Soon Pierre's life disintegrates as the overly-helpful François accidentally destroys his marriage by inviting over Pierre's ex-mistress, tells Pierre's wife to leave when she returns to see Pierre, jeopardises Brochant's finances by thoughtlessly bringing in a scrupulous fellow tax collector responsible for assessing Pierre for the stringent French wealth tax, and pushes to the limit Pierre's sanity with a series of bungles.

Spoilers end here.

Incidentally, the name François Pignon is used by scriptwriter/director Francis Veber in a number of different films such as The Closet and The Valet. In each case, the character is completely different.