Just for Laughs! (1996) User Reviews

A love triangle in an elegant comedy-drama

[zorzalcg · 8/10 · 6 March 2015]

Lucas Belvaux is a french director, known for the trilogy of films Apres la vie, Un couple epatant and Cavale (2002), all of them interlocked in one single story narrated from three different perspectives, the afore mentioned movies, that also represent three different genres (Melodrama, Comedy and Thriller). Pour rire! (1996) is a comedy but also a drama. It tells the story of three intelligent and adult people locked in a tight love triangle that along the length of the film, turns to be more and more complex till all the vertexes involved know about each other and all the fantasies and pretenses are put in the ugly light of reality. The rhythm of the picture is fast and the narrative sophisticated. The casting is perfect. Once more Ornella Muti shows her beauty and her thespian capacities (sadly underrated). She is Alice Obini, a barrister in a prestigious firm and seems to be at ease both with her husband and also with her lover. Jean-Pierre Léaud is Nicolas Gardinier, the husband who's being cheated and we learn on the film about his particular circumstances and his struggle for adjusting to them. He is excellent in his role. The triangle is completed by Antoine Chappey (Gaspard), an sport journalist who likes motorbikes and relationships without complications. He is also very good. In addition to the three leads there's Julliete, acted by Tonie Marshall, a colleague and friend of Alice's that is enduring constant emotional problems. I like very much this film but it's a very difficult item. I have a very old VHS version without subtitles and I had to use a subtitled in Portuguese language like a Rossette Stone for a Spanish translation. One last opinion, if you bear with me. Ornella Muti is an icon of the Italian cinema, always beautiful and alluring. But her filmography is very much neglected, very much confined to the category "rare films" in need of urgent better copies and digital restoration. In the last months I have tried to see all her pictures and it was a tantalizing experience. Seeing and not seeing because when the copy is bad, one can easily misjudge the qualities of the movie. Thank you for your patience.

seductive

[Kirpianuscus · 5 July 2021]

A seductive comedy about couple problems. Smart, charming, great acting - Jean Pierre Léaud is just the perfect Nicolas - , giving a solide kick about prejudices about Ornella Muti, using in fair way the art of Tonie Marshall and, no doubts, offering to Antoine Chappey admirable occasion to give a vulnerable , honest and ideal good guy/ lover role. Result, a film about sentmental triangle and other geometrical forms , realistic in some measure, too full of fantaisie/ exagerations in others. But, obvious, splendid crafted.