Courage Fuyons

One would have thought that the subversive ironies of Préparez vos Mouchoirs might have trashed the current run of lightweight French comedies of adultery, but Courage Fuyons proves to be yet another bastard offspring of Pardon Mon Affaire. In its favour it does have the lugubrious Rochefort, a congenital coward given to such acts as stoning his own car rather than irritate some like-minded students (May 1968), and the ever-watchable Deneuve as the chanteuse for whom he forsakes all. But the main theme of cowardice and its toxic effects soon loses its impetus: incidental humour shrinks to a brittle misanthropy, and the underlying suggestion that true love is best contained in the realms of deceit is no more than boulevard comedy has been proclaiming for centuries. CPea.