Francis Veber Serves a Large Helping of Irony in "The Dinner Game" (1998)

Pierre Brochant is a well-to-do publisher with a beautiful wife, a fancy apartment, and a great group of friends. Indeed, he lives a lovely little life. One of his many pleasures are the weekly dinners he and his bourgeois friends have organized. And - how kind of them! - they each bring a different special guest along to these Wednesday gatherings. Lots of fun for everyone, right?

Well, I should mention that their special guests are part of a game these friends play. The rules are thus: Each of them must invite the stupidest person they can find, so they can secretly and subtly mock them throughout the evening. (Hey, it’s not mean if the imbeciles never find out!) The person who brings the biggest idiot du jour wins.

Pierre Brochant’s “scout” (a friend who helps the participants find their “idiots” each week) calls him on one of these Wednesdays with a “world champion” of a fool in his pocket. François Pignon works for the Finance Ministry, but his real passion is making models of buildings out of matchsticks. One of his proudest creations, he tells the scout excitedly, is his replica of the Eiffel Tower. (346,422 matchsticks!)

Brochant invites Pignon to his home for a drink before dinner “to study him,” but fate plays a cruel (or is it a kind?) trick when Brochant throws his back out playing golf earlier that day. Despite being practically immobile, he refuses to miss out on the dinner. Incensed by Brochant’s callousness, Mrs. Brochant storms out.

Pignon arrives just in time to hear a message from Brochant’s wife on the answering machine, declaring that she’s leaving him for good.

What follows is a series of incidences in which Pignon, in attempting to be helpful, instead succeeds in gradually reducing Brochant’s life (built on immorality and lies) to shambles.

In a way, The Dinner Game is the male friendship version of Dogfight. If you recall, that 1991 film is about a group of Marines who play a similarly cruel game: Each guy brings the ugliest girl they can find to a party, where the girls are judged and the guy who brought her is awarded a hundred dollars. In both films, the main character finds himself humbled by the actions and behavior of the person they’ve chosen… but while Dogfight’s Eddie ends up spending a lovely evening with his girl, The Dinner Game’s Brochant is put through the ringer by his would-be dinner guest.

Francis Huster deserves a mention as Brochant’s friend, Juste Leblanc, whom Brochant initially suspects his wife has run to after she leaves. (Never mind that Brochant actually stole Christine from Leblanc to begin with.) Pignon is tasked by Brochant to call Leblanc and, posing as a Hollywood producer, pretend he wants the rights to the book Mrs. Brochant was a co-writer on. He is to then casually enquire as to the wife’s whereabouts. Leblanc catches on to this charade (big surprise), but informs Brochant that the missus is not, in fact, there.

Despite having just been accused of having an affair with his best friend’s wife, Leblanc comes over in a gesture of goodwill to help Brochant find her. Throughout the film, he also manages to convince Brochant not to throw Pignon out each time Pignon fouls something up: He insists they need Pignon in order to carry out their plans.

It’s hard to tell whether Leblanc truly believes Pignon’s their only hope, or if he’s just a shameless enabler, gleefully pushing Brochant further into the fray for his own amusement. If the latter, that behavior highlights an interesting point: While these men collectively enjoy making fun of people they deem below them, it becomes clear that they’re just as eager to laugh at anyone they decide is an idiot—even if it’s one of their own friends. If the former, the fact that they conclude Pignon is their only hope begs the question: Who is truly the idiot? Can’t these men who are supposedly so smart come up with a better solution that doesn’t require someone who continuously bungles simple phone calls?

And this is where the movie finds most of its humor: Not in the fact that although Pignon technically doesn’t do anything wrong, he bungles the situation anyways (which was my expectation before viewing the film). Rather, Pignon does make obvious blunders: He mistakes Brochant’s wife for his mistress (oh, right, Brochant has a mistress - did I mention that?), hence revealing to the wife the mistress’ existence; gives Leblanc Brochant’s own number to call back on when posing as the Hollywood producer… the list goes on. The irony is that despite those mistakes, Brochant is apparently forced to continue putting his life in the hands of the hapless Pignon.

At the risk of sounding like one of Brochant’s snooty friends, I can understand Brochant’s frustration to an extent. If we set aside for the moment that Brochant deserves what’s coming to him - karma in the form of systematic chaos - Pignon could still learn a thing or two about social graces. One could argue that he has only the best of intentions, but in many cases, he’s also just being nosy. His insistence on being involved often appears to be borne not out of a desire to help, but rather a desire to prove himself for his own sake. He lingers and listens in after Brochant asks him to leave, and many times throughout the film, proves an inability to take a hint. And again, while Brochant technically deserves it, it’s worth noting that Pignon himself is not above laughing at Brochant’s folly. That dynamic was difficult to watch at times, but I suppose that’s the ironic humor of it all: instead of feeling bad for Pignon, we begin pitying Brochant.

By the way, they never do make it to the dinner. The closest thing to a full meal we see is the omelet Pignon whips up, and the wine they attempt to “cheapen” with vinegar, to appease Pignon’s tax-inspector friend, who might know the address to the love nest they’ve concluded Mrs. Brochant must be shacking up in. (Spoiler alert: She isn’t there.) In another example of Brochant’s immoralities coming to light, he is forced to hide all his paintings, statuettes, and other valuables that have not been declared. The tax inspector finds them anyway—thanks to Pignon opening the wrong door—and decides that another audit is in order.

Another side note: At least two of the men invited to dinner were categorized as “idiots” primarily because of their obscure hobbies. In addition to Pignon with his matchstick models, there’s also a man who collects boomerangs. This is yet another example of hypocrisy: One could just as soon label Brochant an idiot for his admiration of antique sculptures, for instance. He may know a lot about wine or art, but he clearly fails miserably at being a decent human being (and, again, is dependent upon Pignon to fix various messes).

I am not usually a fan of movies where the same thing happens over and over again until something finally happens at the end. Woman of the Year, with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, comes to mind: the couple does nothing but bicker until a reconciliation occurs in the very final moments of the film. The Dinner Game comes dangerously close to doing something similar: Pignon’s constant blunders, each of a very similar nature, run the risk of getting old—but enough curveballs are thrown that by the time things wrap up, we haven’t been twiddling our thumbs (at least, not too much).

The stakes of this farce are raised somewhat when Mrs. Brochant suddenly lands in the hospital after a car accident. The film’s final “payoff” receives a generous lead-up (rescuing The Dinner Game from Woman of the Year syndrome), in which Pignon makes one last phone call, this time to the hospital. He shows a heretofore uncharacteristic gracefulness in dodging the hurdles presented in reaching Brochant’s wife; and in a touching speech, convinces her to reconcile with her husband.

“Is he there?” she demands. “Is he feeding you the lines of this moving drama?”

“No, madam,” says Pignon, while Brochant watches in awe from the other end of the room. “I’m in a phone booth.” (Also interesting: Up to this point, several of Brochant’s problems are caused by Pignon’s inability to lie. Only when Pignon becomes a smooth liar is Brochant truly impressed with him.)

After Pignon hangs up, Brochant invites Pignon to the next dinner, but with a twist: He says he’ll go as Pignon’s fool, and promises to “think twice before [he] call[s] anyone an idiot.”

But then the phone rings, and Pignon, correctly assuming it is Mrs. Brochant calling her husband to make amends, immediately picks up. Upon hearing his voice, Mrs. Brochant is incredulous once again, believing her husband did in fact put Pignon up to this.

And we’re right back to what we had before: Pignon desperately trying to remedy the situation, while Brochant screams “you idiot!” over and over again.

This would have been funnier if it happened sometime in the middle of the film, but it’s here that the end credits roll; hence destroying any character development, and reversing everything the movie had been working toward.

However, while I would have liked a “nicer” ending, the message we’re left with is arguably more important: Anyone can, in a matter of seconds, become either the fool or the intellectual. So, as Pignon would remind us: Think twice before attaching labels.

In The Dinner Game, no one scene is particularly funny; yet the overall situation is, in retrospect, sardonically amusing. Like Brochant’s predicament, it’s a sad comedy - and in the viewer’s case, you laugh mostly because it’s better than crying.

The Dinner Game

Language: French

Starring Thierry Lhermitte, Jacques Villeret

Dir. Francis Veber

1998