FRANCE
CONSEIL DE FAMILLE
1986 – 35mm – c - 127’
Direction: Constantin Costa Gavras
Screenplay: Constantin Costa Gavras; based on the same novel by Francis Ryck
Cinematography: Robert Alazraki
Editing: Marie-Sophie Dubus
Set design: Eric Simon
Music: Georges Delerue
Costumes: Corinne Jorry
Cast: Fanny Ardant, Johnny Hallyday, Guy Marchand, Rémi Martin, Fabrice Luchini, Caroline Pochon
Production: KG Productions, Gaumont, Films A2
SYNOPSIS
A skillful safe-cracker, after five years in the prisons of Paris, comes back home, greeted with enthusiasm by his wife Marianna and his two little children, François and Martine (for whom their dad has always been busy with his work elsewhere). The man soon comes back to ‘work’. The robberies start again successfully but François, who is eleven, has scented the truth and insists to take part to his father’s night deeds. The father at first hesitates and resists, then he surrenders and teaches François the tricks of the trade. The family lives in prosperity and buys a house on the Seine. Then they move to the Midi of France for other robberies, and while they are there, a powerful American organisation invites to the United States the burglar and his friend, welcomes them as big experts and become partners in order to plan and make big future robberies…
CRITICAL NOTE
“(…) Back from many political films against any kind of tyranny, Costa Gavras confirms his state of grace also in comedy, a genre that he had never experimented. A ‘commedia all’italiana’ in many ways, but still full of perspectives also from the sentimental point of view, led by a delicious irony, by a brilliant taste of cinema enlightened by excellent interpreters, first of all Johnny Halliday and Fanny Ardant (the parents), followed by Guy Marchand, playing the role of Faucon (..)”. (Giovanni Grazzini)
