A disgruntled teenage boy runs away from home, in the company of a louche girlfriend. Angry at the passivity shown by her husband, the boy's mother contacts an old boyfriend and tells him HE is the real father. In order to make doubly sure, she contacts yet another old boyfriend and tells him the same thing. Now two men try to find the boy. One of them is an agressive, hard-boiled investigative reporter, the other one is a mild-mannered teacher much given to crying, dreaming and moping...
"Les compères" is a pretty funny comedy about two very different men trying to find and protect the same adolescent boy. There's also a subplot about an investigation into an unholy alliance between gangsters, businessmen and politicians. Both Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu do very well and their respective looks and styles complement each other nicely. (Some fine casting here.)
"Les compères" boasts a number of quotable lines, such as "It's true, I swear it on the heads of my three fathers !"
In its own way the movie is an ode to the transformative power of love, especially parental love. In the beginning of the movie, the reporter and the teacher are pretty much set in their ways. Upon learning that they might be someone's father, they both begin to change and evolve ; ironically, they begin to ressemble each other, since the reporter discovers an unexpected well of tenderness within himself while the teacher gains in guts and enterprise. Near the end, both men are making plans for the future that would have seemed ridiculous or unthinkable only a few weeks earlier.
It's a bit of a pity that the teenage boy in question is such an obnoxious character. Spoiled, weak, surly and ungrateful, he's pretty much the last individual any halfway sane person would want to claim as a relative. Viewers who like that kind of thing, may want to devise an alternative screenplay in which both the reporter and the teacher walk away delirious with happiness upon concluding that they bear no blood relationship to the little punk...
"Les compères" is a pretty funny comedy about two very different men trying to find and protect the same adolescent boy. There's also a subplot about an investigation into an unholy alliance between gangsters, businessmen and politicians. Both Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu do very well and their respective looks and styles complement each other nicely. (Some fine casting here.)
"Les compères" boasts a number of quotable lines, such as "It's true, I swear it on the heads of my three fathers !"
In its own way the movie is an ode to the transformative power of love, especially parental love. In the beginning of the movie, the reporter and the teacher are pretty much set in their ways. Upon learning that they might be someone's father, they both begin to change and evolve ; ironically, they begin to ressemble each other, since the reporter discovers an unexpected well of tenderness within himself while the teacher gains in guts and enterprise. Near the end, both men are making plans for the future that would have seemed ridiculous or unthinkable only a few weeks earlier.
It's a bit of a pity that the teenage boy in question is such an obnoxious character. Spoiled, weak, surly and ungrateful, he's pretty much the last individual any halfway sane person would want to claim as a relative. Viewers who like that kind of thing, may want to devise an alternative screenplay in which both the reporter and the teacher walk away delirious with happiness upon concluding that they bear no blood relationship to the little punk...