Pierre Richard: the quiet one

By Grégory Monro

Who is Pierre Richard? Is he, as is believed by some, the veritable double of François Perrin, a cult character he invented and for whom he often successfully donned the costume and assumed the blunders? Can he simply be reduced to the unlucky hero of La Chèvre (Knock on Wood) or to the Grand Blond (The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe)? Pierre Richard is the last great representative of the burlesque, in the footsteps of Tati, Etaix and Jerry Lewis and he suffers from the curse of the genre that made him famous – that of a demanding but misunderstood comic universe, an actor extremely popular but spurned by the critics, an artist reduced to his sense of the gag.  Focusing on Pierre Richard the author, the film draws the portrait of a discrete poet whose complexity, artistic desires and commitments have disappeared behind the immensity of his success.