Philippe Noiret
Lucien Cordier
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Coup de Torchon (also known as Clean Slate) is a 1981 French crime film directed by Bertrand Tavernier and adapted from Jim Thompson's 1964 novel Pop. 1280. The film changes the novel's setting from an American Southern town to a small town in French West Africa.
Roger Ebert criticizes Bertrand Tavernier's film as a cold and distancing exercise in existentialism, based on Jim Thompson's novel. He compares it to Albert Camus' "The Stranger" and Faulkner's Snopes family.
Nov 4, 1981 · A humiliated police chief in a French African colony becomes a ruthless killer in this adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel Pop. 1280. Starring Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert and Stéphane Audran, directed by Bertrand Tavernier.
- (6.7K)
- Comedy, Crime, Drama
- Bertrand Tavernier
- 1981-11-04
A neonoir film by Bertrand Tavernier based on Jim Thompson's novel Pop. 1280, set in French West Africa. Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert star as a corrupt police chief and his mistress in this darkly humorous and visually stunning thriller.
- Lucien Cordier
Coup de torchon (a.k.a. Clean Slate) is the most ambiguous, and possibly the most profound, of Bertrand Tavernier's films, one that continues to have a powerful resonance - indeed it seems to be more relevant today than when it was first released in 1981.
- Bertrand Tavernier
Rated: 2.5/4 Oct 23, 2004 Full Review Neely Swanson Easy Reader (California) “Coup de Torchon” is one of the most devastatingly sly, raw and brilliant indictments of man’s inhumanity to man ...
- (7)
- Comedy
In addition to its macabre sense of humor, and the brilliant performances all around—especially a young Isabelle Huppert as Cordier’s mistress—Tavernier’s use of the lingering Steadicam gives an effortless precision to Coup de torchon ’s tense and awkward energy. Print courtesy of the Institut Français.
