I have read some reviews of The Mouton Enragé and I have to correct the overall assumption this movie is a comedy, and that it is about (all sorts of) love. It is not, both not. It is a psychological thriller, about manipulation. The main character, the one to focus on, is therefore not Nicolas Mallet (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with his numerous amourous conquests that lead him to power and wealth, but his crippled friend Claude Fabre (Jean-Pierre Cassel, "father of").
The story is not about how you can indeed achieve wealth by sleeping with the right persons, it is about how easy mankind is to be manipulated. You can make people believe anything. This is rendered here by choosing a meak bleak bank employee to let him be modelled into a fierceless conqueror, just because his friend says "You can do it".
The most interesting character is Claude Fabre. He is een "pied-bot" (clubfoot), and a loser. Failed as a writer (all along the story his manuscript keeps being rejected by editing houses), he earns his living by tutoring school boys.
It's HIS story: how do you cope with failure? By proxy. He lets his friend do all the things he cannot, the one more incredible as the other. I see in it also a heartwrenching comment on how society works: succes is for those who look good. Because Claude Fabre is the one with brains - in fact he is a genius - and still he fails. While his friend Mallet has only his good looks to work for him, and he is the one who soares to enormous succes.
I would like to comment on the end, but that would give too much away. So I rest my case.
The story is not about how you can indeed achieve wealth by sleeping with the right persons, it is about how easy mankind is to be manipulated. You can make people believe anything. This is rendered here by choosing a meak bleak bank employee to let him be modelled into a fierceless conqueror, just because his friend says "You can do it".
The most interesting character is Claude Fabre. He is een "pied-bot" (clubfoot), and a loser. Failed as a writer (all along the story his manuscript keeps being rejected by editing houses), he earns his living by tutoring school boys.
It's HIS story: how do you cope with failure? By proxy. He lets his friend do all the things he cannot, the one more incredible as the other. I see in it also a heartwrenching comment on how society works: succes is for those who look good. Because Claude Fabre is the one with brains - in fact he is a genius - and still he fails. While his friend Mallet has only his good looks to work for him, and he is the one who soares to enormous succes.
I would like to comment on the end, but that would give too much away. So I rest my case.