Le renard jaune

A special case in French cinema ,Jean-Pierre Mocky made lots and lots of movie, without any real commercial success .He had a tendency to botch the job, embedding his good ideas in a trove of bad ones ,thus making frequently spotty works.

"Le renard jaune" (the yellow fox) is a curate's egg , like most of the director's filmography ; although using the wide screen , it's a low-budget movie,in spite of the stellar cast :almost all the scenes take place in "the yellow fox" a café where habitués meet ;on of them ,a writer, is slain ,and all the regulars become suspects .

Let's accentuate the positive ;the scenes in the morgue are excellent black humor: the place is run by an old lady with a singsong voice who asks you to sign before you see the corpse because ,should you faint after identifying it,you wouldn't be able to do it ; the abstract painting is a good trick ; so is Mickael Lonsdale 's time bomb and his final pious line hits home too .