Based on the novel by Pop 1280 by Jim Thomson.1938, in a French african colony. Lucien Cordier is the cop of this village, populated with blacks and a few whites (usually racist and lustful). He is a washout, everyone (including his wife Huguette) humiliates him. He never arrests anyone and looks away when a dirty trick occurs. But one day, he turns into a machiavellian exterminating angel.





With equal touches of Kafka, Genet, and Beckett, director Bertrand Tavernier’s brilliant adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1964 pulp paperback Pop. 1280 takes place in an ethical No Man’s Land. Thompson novels are all harrowing studies in amorality, tales in which we are forced to identify with someone whom circumstances force to do terrible things—a point of view that found perfect fruition in the darkness of American film noir.

Coup de torchon is the story of a saintly madman in a world where the concepts of good and evil have no meaning. The book tells the tale of a corrupt small-town sheriff in the American south of 1910. Tavernier’s change to 1930s French West Africa makes perfect sense. Not only is racism similarly ingrained in both cultures, but the very first black slaves to come to the New World originated in French West Africa—now Senegal—where the film was shot.

Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) is chief of police in Bourkassa. Despite his position of authority, nobody treats him with respect: not his wife, who openly cheats on him; not the town’s citizens, who haven’t failed to notice that he’s never made an arrest; and certainly not the two pimps who use their monthly payoffs to Lucien as an excuse to humiliate him at every opportunity.

According to David Ansen in Newsweek, “Ambiguity is Tavernier’s subject and his style: You may scratch your head at times, wondering . . . exactly what the point of this dark fable is, but you will just as likely be seduced by its macabre humor.” It might seem impossible to make a humorous movie that seriously embraces nihilism. But in the hands of a master like Tavernier, even ambiguity can be entertaining. (Criterion)







En una colonia francesa en 1938, Lucien es un policía de un pequeño pueblo al que casi nadie toma en serio, incluida su mujer. No tiene autoridad y hace la vista gorda ante pequeños delitos. Pero, un buen día, Lucien va a cambiar por completo su forma de ser.





Lucien Cordier, l'unique policier d'une petite bourgade africaine, est la risée du village car tous les habitants savent que sa femme le trompe ouvertement. Ne supportant plus la situation, celuici sombre peu à peu dans une folie meurtrière...





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