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La Cité de la peur

La Cité de la peur

Movie · 1994 · 3 people

Alain Berbérian directed La Cité de la peur (full title La Cité de la peur, une comédie familiale; "The City of Fear"), a French crime comedy and parody released in 1994. Its writers and leading players are the members of the comedy trio Les Nuls: Chantal Lauby, Alain Chabat and Dominique Farrugia. It is also known as Le film de Les Nuls and runs 100 minutes.

The story takes place at the Cannes Film Festival in the 1990s. The projectionists of a bad horror film called Red Is Dead are killed one by one by a mysterious murderer armed with a hammer and sickle, just as in the film. Odile Deray (Chantal Lauby), the film's press agent, quickly sees the killings as publicity for the picture. She brings in its lead actor, Simon Jérémi (Dominique Farrugia), and hires Serge Karamazov (Alain Chabat) as a bodyguard, while commissioner Bialès (Gérard Darmon) leads the investigation. Eddy Mitchell and Jean-Pierre Bacri are also in the cast.

The film directly spoofs big-budget American movies such as Basic Instinct, Pretty Woman and The Terminator. Its humour leans heavily on puns and wordplay, so it is somewhat hard to follow for viewers who do not speak French. It was produced by Pathé Distribution.

DirectorAlain Berberian
Production companyPathé Distribution

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Cast

Only cast members with a profile on this site are listed.

Eddy Mitchell Eddy Mitchell Television actor · 84 years old Tchéky Karyo Tchéky Karyo Actor · died at 72 Valérie Lemercier Valérie Lemercier Actor · 62 years old

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Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Les Nuls' move to the big screen is a bold attempt to fuse parody with a festival satire. Setting it at Cannes and its publicity machine is a smart choice: the press agent who turns murders into marketing is a sharp joke aimed at the industry itself. Alain Berbérian's direction is unshowy; the camera mostly surrenders to the performers' rhythm, which puts the comic timing front and centre. The spoofs of Basic Instinct, Pretty Woman and The Terminator, however, slide into sketch logic at times, so scenes feel like separate routines rather than parts of a whole. The real barrier is language: since much of the humour rests on wordplay, anyone watching with subtitles may miss a good share of the jokes. Still worth a look for anyone interested in parody.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

The full title may call it a family comedy, but this is not one for small children. The plot is about a serial killer, and murders with a hammer and sickle are too much for little ones, however jokey the tone. Most of the gags are French wordplay, so some of the laughs get lost in the subtitles. Best left to adults and older teens who enjoy a spoof.

Yeşilçam Nostalgic A viewer raised on the classics, looking for warm storytelling and strong acting.

To an eye that looks for the grace of the old comedies, this film is a little too loud. Poking fun at a festival, at the film world's vanity and at big American movies is a nice idea, but the humour draws its strength from a string of jokes rather than from the story. In Yeşilçam's best comedies we laughed and grew fond of the characters at the same time; here the characters are mostly vehicles for the gags. Much of the pleasure French speakers take in the wordplay is also lost in translation. Still, cinema's willingness to laugh at itself takes a courage worth applauding.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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