The Cabbage Soup

The Cabbage Soup (La Soupe aux choux, 1981) is a French sci-fi comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Two old country drinking buddies, a jug of homemade hooch, and a visitor from another planet who shows up because he likes the smell of cabbage soup. It's as silly as it sounds, and that's the whole charm.

Claude Ratinier, nicknamed "the Goner" (Louis de Funès), and his neighbor "the Hunchback" (Jean Carmet) are seeing out their days in a half-abandoned village, never far from a glass of strong drink. One night an alien from the planet Oxo drops in and falls head over heels for Claude's signature soup. The guest keeps coming back for seconds, and quietly upends two old men's lives in ways no amount of liquor could have predicted.

Jean Girault, de Funès's regular director on the Gendarme series, handed the great comic one of his last big roles, and here he plays not a frantic boss but a stubborn, oddly touching old man. Adapted from René Fallet's novel, it's a guileless, lovably daft fable for anyone who misses old-school French comedy without cynicism or effects. Stream The Cabbage Soup (1981) online on iFILM.