''Cop au Vin'' (french: Poulet au vinaigre) is a 1985 French

crime film Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...

directed by

Claude Chabrol Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...

. It was entered into the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. The original French title is a pun: it literally means "vinegar chicken," but "poulet" is also French slang for "cop." Chabrol made a sequel in 1986 titled ''

Inspecteur Lavardin ''Inspecteur Lavardin'' is a 1986 crime film co-written and directed by Claude Chabrol. It is the sequel to his 1984 film ''Chicken with Vinegar, Cop au vin''. Synopsis The Eponym, titular inspector travels to a small coastal town to investigate t ...

''.

Plot

In a small town in France, Louis lives in a large tumbledown house where he looks after his disabled and eccentric mother and works by day as the postman. Henriette, the post office clerk, keeps trying to inveigle him but, in addition to the demands of his mother, he spends his evenings spying on his three enemies. These are three leading citizens who have formed a syndicate to buy and develop his house: the lawyer Lavoisier, the doctor Morasseau, and the butcher Filiol. As he and his mother refuse all offers from this unpleasant trio, the two are subject to continual harassment. One day when Filiol is particularly obnoxious, Louis that night puts sugar in the tank of his car. A resulting accident kills the butcher and brings to town the police detective Lavardin. Not averse to beating and waterboarding suspects, he finds that things are considerably more complex. The lawyer Lavoisier has a mistress, Anna, who is friendly with the doctor Morasseau's wife, Delphine, but in quick succession both women vanish. After another accident, an unrecognisably charred corpse is recovered from Delphine's car. Deducing that it is in fact that of Anna, Lavardin has to work out where Delphine is and why she has disappeared. The motive emerges when he learns that it was Delphine's money which the syndicate were relying on for their plans and that she was instead leaving to start a new life with a lover. Freshly arrived in Morasseau's garden is a plaster cast of a nude Delphine, in the base of which Lavardin finds her body. Henriette at last gets Louis into her bed, breaking his mother's hold over him, and Lavardin says he will forget about the sugar in the tank.

Cast

* Jean Poiret as Inspecteur Jean Lavardin *

Stéphane Audran Stéphane Audran (born Colette Suzanne Dacheville; 8 November 1932 – 27 March 2018) was a French actress. She was known for her performances in award-winning films such as ''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' (1972) and ''Babette's Feast'' ...

as Madame Cuno *

Michel Bouquet Michel Bouquet (6 November 1925 – 13 April 2022) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020. He won the Best Actor European Film Award for ''Toto the Hero'' in 1991 and two Best Actor Césars for ...

as Hubert Lavoisier *

Jean Topart Jean Topart (13 April 1922 – 29 December 2012) was a French actor. He was considered one of the best known voices on French television for decades. In addition to providing the voices and narration for television series and animated films, Topa ...

as Docteur Philippe Morasseau *

Lucas Belvaux Lucas Belvaux (born 14 November 1961) is a Belgian actor and film director. His directing credits include the ''Trilogie'', consisting of three films with interlocking stories and characters, each of which was filmed in a different genre. The t ...

as Louis Cuno *

Pauline Lafont Pauline Lafont (6 April 196311 August 1988) was a French actress. She was the daughter of film star Bernadette Lafont and Diourka Medveczky, a Hungarian sculptor. Born Pauline Aïda Simone Medveczky in Nîmes, France, she died in a hiking accid ...

as Henriette *

Caroline Cellier Caroline Cellier (7 August 1945 – 15 December 2020) was a French actress. She appeared in such films as '' L'année des méduses'' (''Year of the Jellyfish''), '' La vie, l'amour, la mort'', ''Le zèbre'' and '. Personal life She marrie ...

as Anna Foscarie *

Andrée Tainsy Andrée Micheline Ghislaine Tainsy (26 April 1911 – 19 December 2004) was a Belgian actress. She worked with several notable actors like Philippe Noiret, Jean Louis Trintignant, Charlotte Rampling and famous directors like Claude Chabrol, Cos ...

as Marthe *

Jean-Claude Bouillaud Jean-Claude Bouillaud (7 June 1927 – 20 June 2008) was a French film and television actor. Biography Jean-Claude Bouillaud is the son of Charles Bouillaud, prolific actor from the 1940s to the 1960s. He first worked for about fifteen years a ...

as Gérard Filiol *

Jacques Frantz Jacques Frantz (4 April 1947 – 17 March 2021) was a French actor. Nominated for the Molière Award, he was renowned for his theatre work, and his voice, which he lent to many actors, such as Robert De Niro, Mel Gibson, John Goodman, and Nick N ...

as Alexandre Duteil *

Josephine Chaplin Josephine Hannah Chaplin (born March 28, 1949) is an American actress and the daughter of filmmaker Charlie Chaplin and his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill. She had a featured role in Pier Paolo Pasolini's ''The Canterbury Tales'' (1972) as May, the ...

as Delphine Morasseau * Albert Dray as André, le barman *

Henri Attal Henri Attal (1936 in Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populat ...

as L'employé de la morgue * Marcel Guy as Le maître d'hôtel *

Dominique Zardi Dominique Zardi (born Emile Jean Cohen-Zardi; 2 March 1930 – 13 December 2009) was a French actor from Paris. He acted in more than 200 feature films, including ''Fantômas'' with Louis De Funès and Jean Marais. He died of cancer at the age of ...

as Henri Rieutord, chef de poste

Reception

Jonathan Rosenbaum in ''Chicago Reader'' said "it wasn't a masterpiece, but at the very least it was a well-crafted and satisfying entertainment" that had "sex, violence, dark wit, a superb sense of both the corruption and meanness of life in the French provinces, a good whodunit plot, Balzacian characters... and very nice camera work by Jean Rabier." ''Time Out'' remarked "it is all done with the skittishness which Chabrol brings to this kind of ''policier'', but given edge by his very mocking eye." ''Variety'' said "the plotting here wouldn’t pass muster on an episode of

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

’ “

Mystery! ''Mystery!'' (also written ''MYSTERY!'') is a television anthology series produced by WGBH Boston for PBS in the United States. The series was created as a mystery, police and crime drama spin-off of the already established PBS show ''Masterpi ...

,” but there’s pleasure to be had in veteran thesp Jean Poiret’s soaked-in-vinegar turn as Lavardin, a gimlet-eyed sleuth with a violent streak that surfaces unexpectedly, yet always at just the right moments."

Sequels

Chabrol directed a sequel, ''

'', in 1986. It was followed by a four-part TV series, ''Les Dossiers de l'inspecteur Lavardin'' (1989-1990), also starring Jean Poiret.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cop au Vin 1985 films 1980s crime films 1980s mystery films French mystery films 1980s French-language films Films directed by Claude Chabrol Films produced by Marin Karmitz Films based on French novels Police detective films 1980s French films