A Slightly Pregnant Man
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C+
A Slightly Pregnant Man combines the talents of 3 highly
gifted people; the brilliant Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, the beautiful
French Catherine Deneuve and director Jacques Demy. The result is a 90-minute film that could
have been a short sketch comedy. Just as
the title suggests the story is about a Parisian driving school owner who is
diagnosed with being 4 months pregnant, which quickly turns into a media frenzy
and the rest of the film is devoted to the problems that ensue. This of course has been a topic that often
gets repeated now and again in cinema and other outlets. A man being pregnant? How can this be?
Now as I
already mentioned this is a combination of three highly gifted people
attempting to execute a poor idea. The
film just goes round and round and something that is this thin in it’s content
does not need to be this lengthy. This
would work much better as a short sketch, but it’s near torture for this to be
a full-length film. I could see Mr. Bean
doing this. So does that mean that this
particular DVD is a dud? Nope. As with almost all of Demy’s work it’s great
to watch his films just for the amazing use of color and directing. Even when the material doesn’t come across
that well, it’s usually well done to some degree. This film certainly has some great color and
this DVD accurately interprets the saturated look of Demy’s palette of color. Yellows and reds are very noticeable and
detailed.
This
particular DVD from Koch does a fairly good job of recreating that world
painted with color. The film appears to
be shot flat widescreen and is presented at 1.78 X 1, anamorphically enhanced
for DVD playback. There is a bit of
grain and slight artifacting that can be noticed throughout, but this is one of
those rare cases where it’s more important that the print be color-rich and
have a bit of detail loss. I think that
most people would rather have good color reproduction and lose a bit of the detail
than vise versa. Sound is a bit on the
weak side with just a plain Dolby Digital mono soundtrack that might work a bit
better for those that can toggle their receiver into stereo mode to help
alleviate the center channel from doing all the work. The musical score from Michel Legrand truly
helps make this film work in cases where it might not have otherwise.
On top of
just the film itself there is also the English Dubbed version, which means you
can alter audio tracks if you want to watch it this way. Highly not recommended! There is also the French trailer that is a
real hoot as well. I have my doubts that
this film will really go down as a classic in the French comedy vein, but it’s
probably entertainment value for some…other’s a torture test.
- Nate Goss
