| Le Dîner de Cons | |
|---|---|
Film Poster |
|
| Directed by | Francis Veber |
| Produced by | Alain Poiré |
| Written by | Francis Veber |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Luciano Tovoli |
| Editing by | Georges Klotz |
| Distributed by | Gaumont |
| Release date(s) | 15 April 1998 |
| Running time | 87 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Box office | 78,599,508 ₣ |
Le Dîner de Cons (English: "Dinner for Cretins")[1], marketed as The Dinner Game in the USA, is a 1998 French comedy film written and directed by Francis Veber. It is a cinema adaptation by Veber of his play Le Dîner de Cons.
Contents |
Pierre Brochant, a Parisian publisher, attends a weekly "idiots' dinner", where guests, who are prominent Parisian businessmen, must bring along an "idiot" who the other guests can ridicule. At the end of the dinner, the evening's champion idiot is selected.
With the help of an "idiot scout", Brochant manages to find a "gem", François Pignon, a Finance Ministry employee whose passion is building replicas of landmarks with matchsticks. When Brochant starts to suffer from a bad back, his wife, Christine, leaves him shortly before Pignon arrives at his apartment, as she realizes that he still wants to go to the "idiots' dinner". Brochant initially wants Pignon to leave, but instead becomes reliant on him, because of his back problem and his need to resolve his relationship problems.
He solicits Pignon's assistance in making a series of telephone calls to locate his wife, but Pignon gaffes each time, including revealing the existence of Brochant's mistress, Marlene Sasseur, to his wife Christine and inviting Lucien Cheval, a tax inspector, to Brochant's house where, in an attempt to disguise his tax evasion, Brochant is forced to quickly hide most of his valuables.
In the meantime, Brochant is able to make amends with an old friend, Juste LeBlanc, from whom he stole Christine, and through the evening's events is forced to reassess his mistakes.
At the 1999 César Awards, the film was honored with six nominations of which it won three. The categories where it won were Best Actor for Jacques Villeret,[2] Best Supporting Actor for Daniel Prévost and Best Screenplay for Francis Veber. It was nominated but did not win for Best Film, Veber as Best Director and Catherine Frot as Best Supporting Actress.
|
|||||