This one has a little bit of a funny past. So I am really bad at understanding movies (except in German and Chinese, funnily enough). I am completely incapable of understanding French unless it’s the super standard bourgeois version of it (luckily most movies actually use it, unlike “Dernier étage gauche gauche” which I still haven’t seen because I don’t understand them in it), and I am terrible when it comes to English accents too (“The Guard” was hard!). Until today I prefer watching English films with subtitles when they are available. So now imagine me in 8th grade or 9th grade or something, after having studied French for a few years and literally everyone of my classmates is better than me at listening comprehension. There was a screening of this little film for the entire school and throughout the entirety of the film I had no idea what was going on. I vividly remember paying close attention especially at the opening scenes to figure out what was happening before I gave up and just watching the other kids laugh at seemingly random times. When I saw that this film was available on our Air France flight (seems like the movie has some sort of cult status with the French!), I strongly had the desire to revisit it to see what it was all about.
Le diner de con
I thought it was funny, in a French way. The haute bourgeoisie, the silly love affairs, the looking down upon the less fortunate – it’s so French! It’s like the whole movie is populated by little Macrons, but in an amusing way. One of the key comedic aspects of the film is how the main character is trying to avoid a tax auditor after all. Of course he got what he deserved in the end but we are definitely designed to root for him despite all his (from today’s standpoint not so lovely) faults. Then again, France is the only country where relatively powerful women were publicly rallying against #metoo so maybe this should not be too surprising. Frenchness aside, the film works. For a “simple” comedy, the plot is clever, the actors are great and the delivery of the one-liner jokes is impeccable. I am not surprised that this film was originally a play (the whole story takes place in one apartment, the characters are amazingly fleshed out, and the dialogue is very theater-like), which definitely helps in my book when it comes to making the film funny in a simple but effective way. It even has a good amount of amusing wordplay in it which I thought was fairly amusing. German or even English films would never do this, as somehow puns are considered some kind of lower level comedy, so just for the puns alone I liked the film.
Nevertheless, if you are able to overlook the smug rich French setting, “Le diner de con” has a lot of fun to offer. I am absolutely not surprised that this is a classic (at least in France it appears), and if I’m in the mood for it I’d totally watch it again.