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The Pharmacist review
:. Director: Jean Veber
:. Starring: Vincent Perez, Guillaume Depardieu
:. Running Time: 1:30
:. Year: 2003
:. Country: France
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Described by its author, first-time director Jean
Veber, as a mix of thriller, horror and humor, The
Pharmacist is the tale of an environmentalist whose
crusade cuts a bloody path as he murders
high-profile symbols of ecological nuisance—a tobacco
industry tsar and the head of a cosmetics
company, among others. Yann Lazarrec, a pharmacist, is
the anti-hero of a good cause and the fact that he
closely resembles a French heartthrob (Vincent Perez
sporting a messy hair-cut) makes it clear that the
director wants us to sympathize with his main
character despite his taste for serial-killing. When
Yann hears Francois Barrier (Guillaume Depardieu)
claim at a conference that ecology must be fought
as a war, we know that it's love at first sight at an
ideological level. Of course it turns out that
Francois is the very cop on his tail, but also a
troubled soul tortured by his wife's infidelity.
As the film opened, I had the weird and uncomfortable
feeling of watching a TV movie until I realized it was
actually some news footage. But then the footage ended
and the feeling remained, growing even more as the
poor cinematography, awkward angles and a
strong cast—wasted here—blended into some indigestible
genreless jambalaya. What must have looked good on
paper—which might explain the involvement of A-names
like Perez & Depardieu in this first effort—turns
into an onscreen mess.
Veber, the son of famous French comedy specialist
Francis Veber (The Dinner Game, La Chèvre), worked on a few scripts
before stepping behind the camera, and after seeing
The Pharmacist it is obvious that he is more a
writer—even debutant—than a director. Veber claimed
to have been the subject of some negative French
critiques for having mixed genres, but the issue is
not there. The main failure of his work as a
screenwriter is not to have been able to properly
balance thriller, horror and humor. As the attempts at
horror are never scary and the thriller sounds phony,
we are only left with a few amusing moments and some
welcome touches of poetry—the scene with the killer
ladybugs in particular. Veber can write some
spirited dialogues—when he doesn't fall into Luc
Besson-like fart jokes—but the rest of the time, his
writing is dull, even showing a bad taste for
misogyny. Worse are his filmmaking abilities as
he is neither able to set up scenes that work, nor can
he direct his actors who go overboard—Perez in
particular. The multiple references to genre cinema,
from Seven to The Silence of the Lambs, The Crow
2 (here Perez badly spoofs his already bad incarnation
of the avenging Goth) and Le Cercle Rouge
don't bring the kind of legitimacy that can be found
in the works of talented directors such as Quentin
Tarantino.
Perez and Depardieu are voluntarily cast
counter-nature here, but neither is Perez credible as
a killer, nor does Depardieu convince as a cop. The
transvestite cameo from Pascal Legitimus, of the
famous stand-up trio Les Inconnus, also falls flat.
Burdened by its multiple flaws and heavy-handed
sub-plot lines, The Pharmacist loses its ecological
purpose, giving you a prescription you certainly
won't want to follow.
Fred Thom
 Reviews of French Movies: 2012 - present
French Films: 1998 - 2011 Reviews
French Music Reviews
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