PIGNON, o herói cômico de Francis Veber: de personagem a meta-personagem

• Autores: Leonardo Cunha
• Localización: Avanca / Cinema 2012 / Cine Clube de Avanca (dir.), 2012, ISBN 978-989-96858-2-6, págs. 684-690
• Idioma: portugués
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• Resumen

  • Francis Veber is a peculiar case in contemporary French cinema: although he has written and/or directed 30 films,most of them popular acclaimed comedies, and although several of his scripts were remade in Hollywood (bydirectors such as Billy Wilder, Mike Nichols and Ivan Reitman), Veber is usually overlooked by French film critics andscholars, who often claim his comedies are too broad and repetitive.In my PhD thesis in cinema studies, made at UFMG (Brasil), I argue that Veber accomplishes an intricate seriesof variations on the same theme (or “variations on the same fool”, as I called it). This becomes clearer and veryengaging in the so-called “Saga Pignon”, which comprises 7 films, all of them built around the character namedFrançois Pignon.The essay I propose to Avanca analyses a distinct trait in the Saga Pignon: the way in which Pignon evolves from aregular character to what I call a meta-character. In the first films, Pignon has a more passive (or reactive) attitude.He mostly gets involved, unawarely, in a scheme or a quid pro quo. As the Saga moves along, Pignon becomesmore and more aware of his participation in these schemes and misunderstandings. In more recent films he isthe one who disseminates, on purpose, the quid pro quo (“The Closet”) or even gets paid to play a different rolewithin the plot (“The Valet”). The public who follows the Saga have several elements to capture the contextual andparodical aspects of Veber’s comedies.