Tandem

Mortez has hosted the radio quiz La Langue au chat for so long that nothing about it has changed in years. Rivetot has spent twenty five years handling everything else: they cross France in an old Ford estate, broadcasting from a different town each evening, and Mortez still believes he is the voice of the nation. Then Rivetot learns the programme is being cancelled and says nothing. The whole film runs on that silence, on a man doing everything he can to keep the tour going, fill the halls and postpone the truth by one more day. Patrice Leconte casts it perfectly. Jean Rochefort plays the vain and fragile host, Gérard Jugnot the assistant whose devotion is never once spoken aloud. It opened on 17 June 1987. Its weakness is rhythm. As a road film some stops feel like repetitions of earlier ones, and the middle stretch slackens. Who it is for: lovers of quiet friendship stories and provincial France. Who it is not for: viewers who need incident and turning points.