Coup de Torchon - Criterion Collection

Coup de Torchon - Criterion Collection

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Editorial Reviews

An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief- turned-heartless killer and his scrappy mistress from the American South to French West Africa. Featuring pitch-perfect performances by Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert, this striking neo-noir straddles the line between violence and lyricism with dark humor and visual elegance, perfectly captured by Criterion's glorious new anamorphic transfer.

Bertrand Tavernier tranforms Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280 into an engrossing and unsettling meditation on moral collapse. Arguably his best thriller, the French director transposes the story from the American South of the 1910s to colonial West Africa of the 1930s, where the very first black slaves entered the New World. Philippe Noiret plays a bumbling police chief who's the butt of ridicule in the corrupt town, with an abusive wife (Isabelle Huppert) who cheats on him and laughs in his face. But Noiret reaches a point of quiet madness, slowly getting his revenge by going on a killing spree. The subdued actor is at his best here, adopting a goofy attitude that works to his benefit when no one suspects him of the diabolical murders. A great subversive film enhanced by Philippe Sarde's jazzy score and wild camera movements intended to be out of sync with the action. --Bill Desowitz

Customer Reviews

The Tornado at the Dog's Convention

Reviewed by Bryan Byrd, 2009-10-11

'Coup de Torchon' is an ambiguous film. The main character, Lucien Cordier, is the equivalent of a small town sheriff in French West Africa just prior to WWII - and as he interacts with the coarse population of this outlying community, I can't tell if he's lost his mind or is just very clever. Throughout the film, he sets up his enemies for untimely ends, and orchestrates it so that the blame falls squarely on someone else, all while pretending (?) to be a simpleton, a buffoon. But what makes the film cryptic is that Bertrand Tavernier as director does not massage the audience into identifying with or denying Lucien - instead he keeps the camera rolling and lets us decide for ourselves.

'Coup de Torchon' is based on 'Pop 1280', my favorite novel of Jim Thompson's, but unfortunately, I had a difficult time connecting with the movie, although I thought the adaptation was well done. Also, transplanting from Texas to Africa had very little or no effect on the overall tone, and the actors were excellent. The trouble that I had was that by the end, I thought the film definitively answered the question of Lucien's sanity, and I was unprepared for that. It may have been something I missed in the novel, but Thompson hadn't seemed up for answering that question - instead he left it to the reader.

Another factor of uncertainty is that I can never be sure, with film or novel, whether the darn thing is a comedy or a tragedy - and again, in 'Coup de Torchon', no one seems willing to commit. I've seen comedy in violent movies before, and vice versa, but the set up is usually such that the viewer is permitted to laugh because the violence is directed at someone whom we're prepped to believe deserves it. 'Torchon' isn't that easy, and although there isn't any open-endedness to its events, because of the amoral complexity some viewers may feel frustrated with the temper of the film.

This movie will not have a broad appeal, but I'd certainly recommend it to those interested in moral tangles. Lucien, as a distilled version of humanity with all its puzzling contradictions, brings into sharp relief the utter absurdity of our collective actions. Individually, he is repugnant - but when nations undertake the same behavior, we throw parades. WWII looms in the immediate future of these people, and within that context, the reproach I feel for Lucien could be interpreted as fraudulent nonsense - which is another reason I felt a bit uncomfortable during the film.

Uncompromising, 'Coup de Torchon' will quite possibly offend, especially those who are not prepared to question their beliefs. Nonetheless, it is certainly a worthwhile movie, and one that left me many things to think over.

This Criterion Edition is unrated, though it contains nudity, adult language and situations, and violence (not graphic). Extras include an interview with Bertrand Tavernier and the trailer for the film, but no commentaries.

I'.m not sure what I think about this..

Reviewed by R. Swanson, 2009-03-07

I'm paraphrasing the lines of the hero when he confesses that he has thought and reflected and pondered about his life situation and after sleepless nights and trying to wrap his mind around it, he finally decides that he just doesn't know what the f.... to do. This is how I felt after seeing this film. I lay awake in bed, trying to wrap my mind around it, to make some sense of it and finally decided that I couldn't, and went to sleep.

Tonight I decided to read some of the reviews of Jim Thompson's book on which this film is based, hoping to get some insight into what the film was trying to do and whether or not it succeeded. I'm sure that if I read the novel I'd be better equipped to make a judgment but frankly the film didn't interest me enough to get the book.

From what I can draw, however, it seems to me that a very rough but smart and funny noir novel that was set in Oklahoma has been transposed into French West Africa, and not entirely successfully. I don't think it's the fault of the locale switch, though. To me it's the vision of the the director, Bertrand Tavernier. Is he making a hard-nose noir thriller or a charming character study? Is he going for cold-blooded or warmth? Part of the problem may be that it's shot very beautifully in color which gives it a lot of warmth.

My best guess is that the main mistake is in the the casting of the wonderful Phillippe Noiret as the protagonist. Noiret is a big, teddy bear of a guy whom I'd hire as a Santa Claus or invite over to baby sit my grandchildren. He seems so inherently sweet that his "conversion" from meek, pushed-around, good-hearted, small town sherrif who can't bear to actually put people in jail, to cold-hearted murderer just isn't convincing. I can imagine that, in the novel, there's no such problem and perhaps if another actor were playing the role, it would work better for me. (I had no problem following Matt Damon down his road to destruction, in The Amazing Mr. Ripley....another film in which we get so involved in the character of the murderer that we want him to go free.)

In the first half of the film we see the sherrif (Noiret) not only being passive and a push-over, but genuinely kind. He helps the schoolteacher remove a speck from the eye of one of her Black pupils and later, he pays for admittance to the movies for a group of her pupils. He is kind to his Black servant, unlike the rest of the French White colonists. The way the film shows him (I don't know how it's done in the novel), his unwillingness to punish people doesn't seem to be a matter of laziness as much as a genuine aversion to causing harm. He seems to be a genuinely kind man and that kind of kindness comes from strengh, not weakness.

So, when he changes his tune and starts shooting people...well I have to wonder why, exactly. At first I cheered him on because his targets were genuinelly sleazy characters. But then, when he shot the Black servant I really had to scratch my head in wonder. Was he really a repressed rageaholic all along who was just afraid of showing it? This may be more analysis than one wants to undertake, but in order for the film to make sense, one has to have a sense of the man's basic character. There is so much talk at the end from the guy, trying to explain himself, that it seems that the film maker is at least trying to address the problem. And he doesn't do a good job of it, IMHO.

Some reviewers here simply state that the guy went insane but that doesn't seem right to me, either.

In the final analysis I can only say that the film seems to have lost something in translation. Noiret seems like someone's favorite old uncle who spends his time making wine in the south of France. I'd like to send him back to Provence and leave the gangster films to the real bad guys. (and leave Isabel Huppert in Africa to stand trial) I think it's the inconsistency of the vision of the director that makes the film fail to genuinely satisfy. But it's clever, visually appealing, and watching Noiret is always a pleasure.

Sun-drenched film noir . . .

Reviewed by Ronald Scheer, 2007-08-09

For my money, this is one of French director Bertrand Tavernier's best and most imaginative films, based on a Jim Thompson novel and filmed entirely in Senegal - transported there from the American South. A 2-hour film, shot in muted colors and to a great extent with a Steadicam, it has a look and feel that studiously avoids the exotic and any of the cliches and stereotypes that Western audiences might have about Africa. While technically a film noir in its subject matter and its focus on crime and the criminal mind, it also avoids the cinematic conventions of that genre, with its sun-drenched images and its mix of dark psychological drama and cold-blooded violence with comedy and farce. A story without a moral center, it refuses to find a neat way out of the conflicts it creates, and neither love nor the judicious use of firearms is able to bring the ambiguity at the heart of the film into resolution.

The performances in the film are striking, especially veteran Phillipe Noiret as the small town policeman who finds that he's free to disavow a code of morality that might have restrained him were he not representing the law far from France in a colonial town in the 1930s. Set morally adrift, he finds himself capable of justifying any misbehavior, whether cheating on his wife or murdering a faithful retainer. Like Tavernier's other excursions into character, time and place, this film poses a number of intriguing questions that it leaves partly unanswered. The final image of Noiret, about to commit an unspeakable act and then discovering a sudden lack of resolve, represents well the final enigma of his character. The DVD includes a long and very informative interview with Tavernier.

Failed product from France

Reviewed by Quilmiense, 2006-05-17


This is a typical strange film from French director Bertrand Tavernier, with Isabelle Huppert as female star. It happens in French West Africa. You have the black natives and the white French, as the 2 opposite races that play a big part in the story. You have also the bad guys, vicious, racist, stupid, against the main character, to whom everything is related.

There is a transformation in this character along the film. And this transformation seems to be the "story" of the film. What this transformation means, how it comes to happen, what is going on exactly, I don't know. You may take a guess if you see this film. But as for me, I didn't care, because even a boring and uninteresting film I can take it, but not when it is narrated in this unoriginal and coarse way.

I have to say that I like most of the French cinema, so apparently boring and lack-of-action films don't mean bad to me. But this one is just not nice to look at. I couldn't figure out what the whole thing was about (and if it was about what I just said, then it's not worth it). I can't get to like any of the characters. I film with no hero, not even somebody to like!

The only thing I liked was the outdoors scenery, and the photography was nice.

This director is no good.

The law of the jungle!

Reviewed by Hiram Gomez Pardo, 2006-03-27

A bureaucrat,a man good for nothing is a credited police in Bourkassa, Western Africa, 1936. The corruption in its several faces rides on him, laughs of him and mocks about him. His marriage is a mess; his wife is lover of her own brother a stupid pimp.

This is the dramatic stage chosen by Tavernier to make an ambitious film where the predator concept will surround the screen thanks to a perfect script. Three out of this world stars of cinema such as Noiret, Audran and Huppert are overwhelming.

A sublime masterpiece; a legitiamte pride for the French Cinema in the early eighties.