| Pardon Mon Affaire | |
| Director: | Yves Robert |
| Producer: | Alain Poiré Yves Robert |
| Starring: | Jean Rochefort Claude Brasseur Guy Bedos Victor Lanoux Danièle Delorme Anny Duperey |
| Music: | Vladimir Cosma |
| Cinematography: | René Mathelin |
| Editing: | Gérard Pollicand |
| Runtime: | 105 minutes |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Gross: | $21.9 million[1] |
Pardon Mon Affaire (French title: Un éléphant ça trompe énormément, in English literally An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive) is a 1976 French comedy film co-written and directed by Yves Robert.
The film was remade as the 1984 American film The Woman in Red.
The original title contains a pun in French. The word "trompe" means both "the (elephant's) trunk" and "to cheat" (in the sexual/romantic sense). The movie is about a married man's desire to have an affair with a model he just met. The film was followed by the sequel Pardon Mon Affaire, Too! in 1977.
In Paris, four men in their 40s meet to play tennis and socialise. Two are married with children: Étienne, a senior civil servant, fantasises but stays faithful, while Bouly is a serial womaniser whose wife keeps leaving him. The other two are unmarried: Simon, a hypochondriac doctor, lives with his overbearing Jewish mother, and Daniel, a car salesman, secretly lives with another man.
In the car park under his office one morning, Étienne sees a beautiful woman walk over a grating when, like Marilyn Monroe, a blast of air sends her dress over her head. This is the woman of his dreams, who he sets out to pursue. A photographic model called Charlotte, she is amused at his attentions and does not discourage him too ferociously. She makes a date to meet him in London, where she is on an assignment, but his plane is diverted by fog.
Back in Paris, Charlotte agrees to go with Étienne to see his godmother, to whom he is devoted. There they find his three friends, his children, and his wife, who have all gathered secretly to welcome him. Daniel, with great aplomb, pretends that Charlotte is his girl friend and takes her home. Returning, he whispers her address to Étienne, who did not know it. Étienne goes there, and the two at last consummate their attraction.
In the morning the phone rings and Charlotte's husband tells her he will be home in a few minutes. She pushes Étienne, wearing just a dressing gown, out of the window onto a ledge. After she makes love with her husband, the couple leave and Étienne remains trapped, seven storeys above the Champs-Élysées. A crowd gathers, the fire brigade are called, and a TV crew films the rescue, which is watched by his wife and children as they eat their breakfast.
The scene at the beginning of the film where Anny Duperey dances above an air vent which makes her skirt fly, is directly inspired by the scene with Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch by Billy Wilder.
In France, Claude Brasseur in the film is the first “positive” homosexual character in French cinema, to the point that a San Francisco association wanted to congratulate him. His agent initially advised him not to accept the role, but he insisted, setting a condition: “I said straight away that I didn't want to make Daniel a twisted madwoman!". He also asked to play a fight scene in the film. During the scene where his sexuality is revealed, his lover calls him a “poor cunt” in front of his stunned friends. Claude Brasseur explains: “At that moment, I look at my friends to challenge them. There you go: I'm a faggot and I'm pissing you off! But in the next scene, I'm at home. I cry because I think I'm going to lose my friends who won't understand. Rochefort arrives. He doesn't see me crying. I am filmed from behind, out of pride.[2]
In Turkey, Ertem Eğilmez directed a movie based on same script localised to an Istanbul Ad Agency executive. Cast with well known theatrical talent to the local audience, the film remains a popular cult classic film despite taking place in rather upper echelons of the society at the time.