As Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre is in many ways synonymous with Jacques Tati's film Jour de Fête, or Bergues is with Dany Boon's Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, so Villerville is with Henri Verneuil's Un singe en hiver. The unforgettable (and only) pairing of Jean-Paul Belmondo with Jean Gabin is electric, and even today (a cold one) there were people here looking for the obvious spots where the film took place, made easier by posts bearing photos of the film and quotations from the screenplay by Michel Audiard. This is such an enormous cult movie that a huge number of people remember the whole script by heart.
Just as you enter Villerville, this movie still greets you.
Obviously the 'bull-fighting' scenes by Belmondo, echoing the games played with cars by Antoine Blondin on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, are more of less impossible to pinpoint geographically.
The scene on the steps of the Gendarmerie Nationale.
The (at the moment closed) Cabaret Normand, where Belmondo famously got pissed on Picon beer, danced a flamenco (with a real flamenco dancer posing as his legs), told the customers to get to their igloos, etc, and was thrown onto the street. This bar is obviously the main point of interest.
Well, your husband may still be obsessed with China, but with me it's Spain.
Posts
