Vitals

Philippe Noiret as Lucien Cordier, ineffective yet conniving colonial police chief

French West Africa, Summer 1938

Film: Coup de Torchon
(English title: Clean Slate)
Release Date: November 4, 1981
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Costume Designer: Jacqueline Moreau

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

For the 12th anniversary of my first-ever BAMF Style post, today’s entry is a labor of love analyzing the style from the French adaptation of one of my favorite novels, Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson. Born 118 years ago tomorrow on September 27, 1906, Thompson specialized in hardboiled crime fiction that has frequently been adapted into movies, including The Getaway, The Grifters, and The Killer Inside Me.

Published sixty years ago in 1964, Pop. 1280 is a darkly comic retread of the themes Thompson explored in The Killer Inside Me, following a southern sheriff whose mild-mannered persona masks his psychopathy. Set during the 1910s, Pop. 1280 is narrated by Nick Corey, the blissfully lazy “high sheriff of Potts County,” the 47th largest in an unnamed state of 47 counties. Nick presents himself as a dimwitted pushover, while secretly manipulating and murdering his way through his friends, family, and mistresses, all while nurturing delusions of being God’s agent sent to punish the sinful town of Pottsville.

Though there are rumors of a future adaptation directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (who seems well-suited for the material), the only major screen adaptation to date is Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon, which earned ten César Award nominations and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Academy Awards.

Adapted by Tavernier and Jean Aurenche, Coup de Torchon maintains the story’s center around a lazy lawman living with his domineering wife and her overly affectionate and slow-witted, uh, “brother”, in a small town where he’s the constant target of bullies, from those in his own household to a boastful fellow lawman who works several towns away. However, the setting is shifted to the fictional French West African town of Bourkessa on the eve of World War II, and the protagonist is reimagined as Lucien Cordier, played by Philippe Noiret, a two-time César Award-winning actor born in Lille on October 1, 1930.

“Doing nothing is my job, I’m paid for it,” Cordier explains to the two snappily dressed pimps who regularly torment him, adding with some earnestness: “At times—not always—I think I’ve found paradise on Earth.” Continue reading →