So Long, Stooge (1983)

So much average

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

In mid-2016 a friend invited me to check a box of DVDs he had purchased at the market.The first cover to catch my attention was a cool-looking French Neo-Noir that I've never heard of before. Rushing to check the movie, I was disappointed to find no English Subs on the disc,and little sign of the film online. Continuing to try and find a version with subtitles for over a year,I was happily caught by surprise,when a fellow poster on the Fistful of Leone directed me to the place where I could at last say, so long.View on the film:Fuelling up in early 80's France, co-writer/(with Alain Page) director Claude Berri & cinematographer Bruno Nuytten pull Neo-Noir atmosphere through a Cinéma Du Look (CDL) filter of dusty neon blue igniting Bensoussan's moped ride along the underbelly of the city. Dragged away from his dead-end job by Bensoussan,Berri makes Lambert's confrontations with local gangsters crackle with short, blunt force Noir violence, spiked by the ruby red lights of Lola's Punk culture rumbling into their lives.Adapting Page's own novel,the screenplay by Page and Berri brilliantly scrambles Neo-Noir grit to the stylisation of CDL, via the Film Noir loner getting converted to the trio (and in Lola and Bensoussan cases: youthful rebels) being outcast of society,each stuck in a wilderness they can't escape, ruled with an iron fist by separate from each of them, the writers brilliantly make Lambert become the centre of the group by his tough-nosed actions being driven by a desire to keep Lola and Bensoussan safe,which shatters in a freeze-frame final.Stomping into their lives,Agnès Soral gives a whirlwind performance as Lola-at first powered by Soral with a Punk thump against any attempts made to bond with her, which Soral curls into compassion as she learns of Lambert's past. Bringing the trouble to town,Richard Anconina gives an infectious performance as Bensoussan,which sparkles even as he gets in too deep. Famed as a stand-up comedian, Coluche (who died age 41 from a motorbike accident in 1986) gives an amazing performance in his first "serious" role as Lambert,thanks to Coluche capturing how the outsider status has worn Lambert down, until the crossing of tracks with Lola and Bensoussan has Coluche crunch down on Lambert with a determination to say, so long.

Thanks to ARTE TV I could see now Claude Berri's 'film noir' Tchao Pantin (or So Long, Stooge in its English version) starring Coluche in the lead role. The film was made in 1983, at a time when I was busy with changing the course of my life, and no wonder I missed it. It represents a milestone in the career of both Claude Berry who after this film took a three years break in order to create his two best known films - Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring - very different in subject and style, and also in the career of Coluche who assumes here a more 'classical' and fully dramatic role which could have been a changing point in his career. One year later however, Coluche will die in a motorcycle accident, and this film includes involuntarily kind of a premonitory coincidence as motorcycles and death play a key role in it.The story is quite a typical 'film noir' intrigue, with the key characters - a drunkard gas petrol pump seller who hides secrets of a previous tragic life and a loser type of small drug dealer of Moroccan origin who hides his own secrets among which a shelve full of books he claims to have read all, are getting together in a world were there is not much to attach to but maybe a peer similarly broken soul. There is also a girl in the film, a punk girl (we are in the early 80s, remember) but her role will become more clear only in the second part, after the younger character is murdered and the quiet and withdrawn older man engages on the path of finding the killers and revenging his friends. Typical intrigue, as I said, which has little chances to end otherwise than it ends.As a reader of the 'serie noir' books since childhood I cannot avoid falling under the charm of such stories, especially when they take place in Paris, here a Paris of decrepit houses, or messy small flats, of dangerous streets and dubious bars where everything is trafficked. I was not that surprised to find out that the cinematography belongs to Bruno Nuytten the director of Camille Claudel which I have also seen and written about recently, a film that had an amazing cinematographic look. Coluche seems in this film like having taken inspiration from other Big Silent tough guys in the history of the French cinema, his role could have been played in other times and other periods of their respective careers by screen monsters like Michel Simon or Jean Gabin. I liked the performance of Agnès Soral as the young punk girl whose profile and appearance seems to announce a quarter a century early the character of Lisbeth Salander in the Scandinavian 'Millennium' saga. While the story has been played too many times before and after this film to surprise anybody nowadays, there are many good reasons to watch or watch again this movie.

a film noir. it is the most easy definition for a film who escapes to a clear verdict. because it is one of the films who, after the final credits, becomes a state of emotions. sure, the great merit has Coluche. but he is part of an impeccable story, simple, honest, touching, bitter, about friendship and errors of past, appearances and love, justice and purpose of a broken life. a film like a confession. about yourself and about the others. and about the need to escape from yourself doing the right things in the right manner. a story who becomes a state of soul. this is the most important thing for this film. and the basic motif for who it is different. special. a sort of masterpiece out by ordinaries rules.

Sometimes, the "magic" of cinema seems to take hold of us.The two main characters are superb. So is cinematography. Everything is "in the dark, humid, without hope". Lanky Lola (1.78 m), while providing the inevitable love interest, is quite gelid and stolid, so her beauty (rain scene!, she awakening chez Lambert!) is not overtly "too much".Bensoussan is a stupid kid, while Lambert... what a script! This should be required viewing for budding plot writers. He speaks seldomly, bluntly, seemingly without passion, world wearily, like a philosopher who decided to toss the world aside, as "a useless hypothesis". Gradually we get to know his intentions, which are not clear from the beginning (he's a master at deception :)!), but make sense afterwards. Unlike many Hollywood commercial thrillers, that try to be witty and only end up being preposterous. Or "revenge" films alla Stallone and Bronson, without any emotion because there's nothing to "balance" the killing spree.This is a "cartesian" movie. "Clear and disc tint" ideas. If issued by a "gas station clerk", well, that's the master's disguise!The Paris we witness is not the postcard's or Bardot's: everything is seedy, "the system" is rotten, like the copper Bauer's synthesis near the end: "There'll always be another one".The ending is fine! Seldomly had I thought: "this should end right here", and it did.IMDb reviewers agree on Bruno Nuytten (DP)'s work. Luckily enough, I hadn't read those reviews, and while watching even the first minutes I said: "what a good 'atmosphere'". That's a good work: noticeable even without "knowing it's something important".Berri doing this shows a hidden potential. Pity he didn't do more of the genre! Maybe he "needed" all this "sun drenched Southern France" to make one "night" film...I agree with IMDb reviewers like gregory-joulin about its two-part structure, and with Bob Taylor that probably the first part is the best. But I admit it: I felt more with the second. "Plot holes"? Many. But who won't remember the "murder by the small filling station" or the way he swiftly avoids Bauer's questioning. Unassuming, without hesitating, thus lethally. Just like what follows suit...I liked his "method of interrogation": breaking the mobster's motorbike (not the man). And the way he answers to Bauer on why he was't working: (seeming concerned) "With all that happened, I had to take a few days off". (About this film) Lambert would just quip: "Watch it".