Heureux anniversaire

With his wife (Laurence Lignières) having prepared an anniversary luncheon at home, husband (Pierre Étaix) is out in Paris hoping to get her some nice gifts before returning for dejeuner. What he hasn’t quite factored in, though, is that the old cobbled streets of the city centre are jam packed with other motorists vying for that last parking space or just generally sitting in endless queues of traffic edging forward inch by inch. As she becomes peckish at home and begins to nibble, he makes little progress. Soon, well Mme. has tucked into the vin rouge and he is racing home after having been through half a dozen adventures and more than the one car before he finally arrives bearing a particularly bedraggled sunflower. This is one of these “if it can go wrong it will” style comedies but it never ends up slapstick. The rapidly paced choreography is centred around the perfect manoeuvring of some pretty dinky old motor cars, a poor soul just trying to complete his shave and our increasingly delayed, impatient (and hungry) gent finding everything landing butter side down. There’s very little dialogue, it is all left to the photography and to some typically French mannerisms and facial expressions and I really did find I both enjoyed this and wanted a salami sandwich afterwards, too. Good fun.