Massive commercial success usually buys an actor the right to bring a pet project to fruition. The Artist had not yet conquered the planet when The Players was cooked up. But its release in the UK – simultaneously in cinemas and on DVD, which says it all – is of note mainly because it features Jean Dujardin. Teamed with Gilles Lellouche, the two stubbly middle-aged roués explore the corridors and back passages of playing away, French style.
The film’s original title is less euphemistic: Les infidèles is an adultery palimpsest whose original French poster (pictured right) caused a storm in a PC cup when Dujardin was on the Oscar campaign trail in the US. The Players features a series of short films - some very short - each made by a different director. Half are insouciantly comic – none more than the top-and-tail sequences (written by the two leads, the latter directed by them too), in which two sex addicts rail at marital orthodoxy in medias res, only to discover true love in Vegas with – spoiler alert – each other. In a frothy segment directed by Michel (The Artist) Haznavicius, Dujardin plays a corporate misfit at a hotel conference who just can’t get laid; in another a woman (Sandrine Kiberlain) runs a hopeless group therapy session for inveterate adulterers. Other sections take on a darker hue: Lellouche is made to look a fool by his coltish young squeeze (Clara Ponsot) before returning battered to his trusting wife, while in much the most searching segment Dujardin and his actual wife Alexandra Lamy play a game of revelation that turns desperate. Significantly, it’s the only segment which truly considers the woman's point of view. It's also the lone film written and directed by a woman: Emmanuelle Bercot, who also scripted (and acted in) Polisse.
The Players is an uneven platter of amuse-gueules which could have been made only in France, where the extramarital dalliance is not just a biological compulsion but also apparently some kind of statutory right. As an examination of a mind-set, this shagging dogs story is more anecdotal than analytical, and for all its satirical probing, a little too shot through with a toxic mix of self-pity and narcissism. The climactic argument - that all this frantic rutting masks latent homosexuality - is almost funny, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. For an account of what one might call the French vice which doesn’t just shrug the whole thing off, read Lucy Wadham’s piercing The Secret Life of France.
Watch the trailer to The Players
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