La Soupe aux choux

In an inventive, colloquial idiom, La Soupe aux choux mixes genres, pokes fun at science fiction, dusts off the regional novel and popularizes the concept of hedonism, asking what a life without pleasure is worth. Through a warm and touching story of friendship, René Fallet above all records a countryside threatened by relentless progress and economic expansion. On publication, the novel received both the Prix RTL grand public and the Prix Rabelais.

The story of the clog-maker Claude Ratinier, known as le Glaude, and the well-digger Francis Chérasse, known as le Bombé, is inseparable from Jean Girault’s film starring Jean Carmet, Jacques Villeret and Louis de Funès. De Funès, who had discovered the book shortly after its publication on the advice of his son Patrick, “fell in love with its song of love for the land and its generosity, its compassion for those left behind by modernity, and its deep irony toward every attempt to change the age-old order of country life” (Bertrand Dicale, Louis de Funès, grimaces et gloire, Grasset, 2009). The film follows Fallet’s book fairly closely in its plot, and the actor “always kept an original copy on him, to make sure the scenes being filmed stayed faithful.” He adapted it with Jean Halain, who had already worked with him on the wonderful and too little-known film adaptation of L’Avare. The film, however, was rather poorly received on its release: Les Nouvelles littéraires described “an immense mess, an unmitigated disaster. Nothing of the novel survives: Fallet’s verve and talent are swept away by a frightful tornado of ineptitude, which carries off even the otherwise accomplished skill of Louis de Funès and Jean Carmet,” while Le Figaro shared the same bitterness: “Fallet’s pen, through its colorful episodes, drew a true philosophical tale, of which the film leaves nothing standing. Except perhaps in Jean Carmet’s shrewd, wary, critical, or tender gaze. But the rest is limited to the usual barking, the yapping of a lapdog, the eye-rolling and tongue-clicking of a de Funès who seems to have forgotten his character”…