Le Chêne d'Allouville

This is the second effort by Serge Pénard ;the first one was hopeless:his " Tendrement Vache" told a cock-and-bull story:Henri Duchemin has just lost his good wife,Mary,and he is inconsolable ;after watching a TV broadcast about reincarnation,he does believe that the dead woman is reincarnated as a cow...You read well!

"Le Chêne D'Allouville " (alternate title : "Ils Sont Fous Ces Normands" ,a nod to Asterix )gets off to a most auspicious start: the 1300-year-old oak tree ,the village's pride ,is in jeopardy: its root would have to be cut ,to widen the road ,because of the wheel- and- deal of an unscrupulous greedy (and gay) Député and a mayor at his beck and call ,because he has promised him the Legion D'Honneur.

The treatment is awful,the script is appalling and the actors ham it up shamelessly ;the mayor/vicar rivalry may remind you of a poor man's Don Camillo and Peppone (Duvivier's fifties comedy);all the characters from the politically correct daughter to the journalist are cardboard;the love story is abysmal (and enhanced ,so to speak, by a syrupy score),and an unfriendly look at gays only makes the matter worse.The inhabitants/riot police fights are repetitive and sound like a very bad spoof on those movies-with-demonstration which thrived in the wake of the events of May 68.

This venerable tree did deserve better than this coarse slapstick.