Four battles, zero blood, infinite verbal carnage. French intellectuals destroy each other for sport.
"Resumption of a play created in 1983. Two shipwrecked people on a makeshift raft in the middle of a social conflict, a mountaineering fight on Mount Paterhorn, improbable friction between two men and a woman in the Yvelines ... The places, the situations change, but each time there is a confrontation. The question is not so much who will win, but to take pleasure in the arguments provided by the opponents. Cunning, bad faith, all blows are allowed in what is primarily a fight of words. "
Acting
Arditi and Berléand's decades-honed theatrical chemistry.
Writing
Dialogue so sharp it should carry a weapons permit.
Direction
Czaplinski's invisible hand lets words do the violence.
Director
Patrick Czaplinski
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Originally a 1983 stage hit by Peter Brook collaborator; this film adaptation preserves the deliberately artificial sets that made audiences question 'real' conflict versus performed conflict.
The Mount Paterhorn sequence was shot in an actual studio freezer—Berléand refused doubles for the hypothermia scenes, claiming 'real suffering reads on camera.'
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