Summary
Gérard Bréha, a presenter on a local news programme, is offered a job with
the prestigious cable channel, TV8, presenting the late news bulletin. When the presenter
of the main evening news breaks his leg, Gérard replaces him, and the ratings for
TV8 show a sudden and spectacular rise. Gérard and the ruthless executive who recruited
him, Marie-Ange de la Baume, are determined to build on their success, even if it means
disrupting Gérard’s family life. To that end, they launch their own inquiry
into the mysterious YAM terrorist group, who are raiding gun shops in Paris. Suspecting
that Gérard is having an affair with Marie-Ange, his wife decides to get her own
back when they are both invited to appear on a confessions programme, Franc-Jeu...
Review
La Vengeance d'une blonde combines two potentially promising themes, marital infidelity
and a scathing satire of the television business, the result being a fairly entertaining,
but not brilliant, comic farce. The marital infidelity idea, which is ostensibly
the film's main story strand seems to go nowhere, and it is the outrageous send up of
contemporary French television which offers all the laughs.
With its obsession with ratings, driven by power-hungry television executives having
just slightly fewer scruples than Genghis Khan, television is one activity which is ripe
for satirising, and this film pulls off some of the obvious jokes with moderate success.
The best part of the film is the skit on the "confessions programme", where a jealous
wife embarrasses her husband before a live studio audience, with a stripper on hand to
provide diversionary entertainment. Thierry Lhermitte plays the programme’s presenter
in a disturbing caricature of himself, the ever-smiling TV celebrity with more charisma
than brain cells.
Although there are some brilliant comic moments, the film overall is a little flat and
not entirely satisfying. The acting is generally fine, with Christian Clavier in
particularly fine form. The problem lies in a script which lacks sophistication
(going all too often for the quick obvious laugh) and a rambling plot which bears little
relation with the film’s title.
Also, many of the jokes would be almost entirely lost on an non-French audience (for example,
the witty "YAM = Y en a marre" gag). On the other hand, anyone familiar
with French television (in particular, France 2’s seemingly doomed attempts to recruit
a presenter for their own evening news programme to counter the popularity of Patrick
Poivre d'Arvor on their rival TF1) will find many of the jokes irresistibly funny.
© James Travers 2002
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