The Men (1971)

Original title

Les mâles

Directed by

Gilles Carle

Genre

comedy film

Country

Canada

Runtime

1h 47m

Rating

5.0 of 10 from 12 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two men living in the wilderness decide they need a woman. They try to kidnap a prison guard who is the daughter of the town police chief. A mob of villagers sets out to capture them.

quirkyfast-pacedabsurdtonally mixeddesperateslapstickdarkly humorousoffbeat

What happens

The Men (French: Les Mâles) is a Canadian crime comedy film, written and directed by Gilles Carle and released in 1971. The film centres on Jean (Donald Pilon) and Émile (René Blouin), a lumberjack and a student who have been living off the grid in the wilderness, who decide that they need a woman to join them and head into town to look for one. They resort to kidnapping Dolores (Katerine Mousseau), a prison guard who is the daughter of the village police chief, leading the villagers to mount a vigilante mob to capture Jean and Émile and bring them to justice. The film's cast also includes Andrée Pelletier and Guy L'Écuyer. Martin Knelman of The Globe and Mail reviewed the film favourably, writing that "At his most brilliant, Carle achieves a form of comedy that's part Rabelaisian and part Keystone Kops, but just under the surface of slapstick raucousness there's a sense of desperation, of despair on the brink of violence and defeat. This double-sighted attitude is what gives Carle's movies their peculiar comic edge and their self-propelling energy." The film’s theme song, "Le temps est bon", written by Stéphane Venne and performed by Isabelle Pierre, became a major hit in Quebec and is now regarded as her signature recording. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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