Review of Cloportes

This movie is much more pleasant because of its dialogs (from Audiard) than because of its improbable story. Even the police is surrealistic. The story is basic : 3 gangsters (some of them speaking time to time a very high-society French) try to make a coup. But they need money to prepare it. They reach Alphonse, a good looking and apparently wealthy bad guy. Alphonse knows these men (One of them was at school with him) and what he thinks about them is that they are'not so smart. Alphonse has the reputation to be smart (he is "Alphonse-le-malin"). But Alphonse is not neither "smart", nor open-minded. This movie is on treachery, lies, easy going life and above all : even friends are not friends in a hobbesian world ("homo homini lupus"). But all the scenes are matter to laugh, because of the dialogs and the dark point of view on the human beings and their life is enlightened by the humoristic tone of the "bons mots" and the characters (the old guns saleswoman who tells to Alphonse : "Vendre des armes, c'est un métier d'homme !"). One finds some radical opinions against modern times (a gimmick in Audiard's dialogs) and especially against contemporary art and homosexuality. But these charges against modernity are articulated in a paradoxically way : Alphonse becomes an art salesman before becoming sold by the woman he loves.