Pardon Mon Affaire

Pardon Mon Affaire (1976), known in France as Un éléphant ça trompe énormément, is a French comedy directed by Yves Robert — watch it online on iFILM. Jean Rochefort leads the cast alongside Claude Brasseur, Guy Bedos and Victor Lanoux, with Anny Duperey as the woman who sets everything in motion.

Étienne is comfortably married, well past forty, nothing dramatic on the horizon. Then, outside a Paris ministry building, a gust of wind lifts a stranger's red dress and that is that. He doesn't know her name, her job or anything else about her — just that he can't stop thinking about her. His three friends are recruited to help track her down. All three are carrying on affairs of their own, which makes them enthusiastic accomplices and absolutely terrible advisers.

Robert keeps the film brisk and specific: no lectures, no melodrama, just four men who are better at getting into trouble than out of it, and a city that cooperates perfectly. The same quartet returned the same year in We Will All Meet in Paradise. Watch Pardon Mon Affaire (1976) online on iFILM.