Rive droite, rive gauche

When I see Gérard Depardieu in the leading role, I expect a well-done French movie. After all, that is typical for films from France made in the seventies and eighties. However, this movie introduces a very interesting premise (topical even today) in such a way that in two thirds of the movie almost nothing happens. Gérard plays a lawyer who is drowning in money and then sees the light. But as much as the two thirds are dull, in the last third it finally begins and there is one absurd scene after another. First I didn’t understand the scene where Gérard slightly knocks a car and they turn it into an accident as big as if he had fallen with a car from a fifty-meter steep slope. And then I was knocked down by the finale, which I expected to be brutal, as is typical for French movies, and all I got was a brawl that is over before it even begins. The guy who is getting beaten by Gérard loses his contact lenses, so they look for them together, then they shake hands and the end credits roll. (13/09/2014)