It’s a lousy title, in English anyway. So Long, Stooge – Tchao Pantin in the original French. Might be better as See You, Loser? Anyhow, it’s a rather unusual sort of film – part one a love story of sorts, part two a revenge thriller – tied together by Coluche, a French comedy actor way off his turf here.
Coluche took the gig because he needed to pay the taxman but the choice of roles turns out to be inspired. His knack for a particularly French sort of shrugging deadpan serves him well, especially in the first half, when his Lambert first meets and befriends Youssef Bensoussan (Richard Anconina), an Arab street dude on the make.
Lambert is a loner who lives a routine life and works the graveyard shift in one of those city garages tucked in on the ground floor of old apartment buildings. They surely must all have disappeared by now (this is 1983). One night, followed by cops whose interest has been piqued his suspicious activities, in comes Youssef. While Youssef makes as if he’s going to buy something, but is in fact waiting for the cops to get bored and disappear, the two men – one withdrawn, the other cheeky and chatty – strike up a conversation. A superficial encounter that will deepen in time and become a prickly though profound relationship.
What, exactly, is the nature of that relationship? Romantic, maybe? Claude Berri’s film nags away at that for its first half while spinning us scenarios that are grimy and noirish, while Coluche gives us hints as to Lambert’s nature. When, for example, Lambert savagely tells Youssef that all women are whores, where is that coming from?
It turns out that Youssef is on the streets at night because he’s running drugs for Rachid (Mahmoud Zemmouri), a local Mr Big who is not to be trifled with. Around the halfway mark Rachid will impress on Lambert just how much he is not to be trifled with, and Lambert will respond by going on the attack, in the process revealing hidden swathes of professional back story and personal woe. The quiet set-up gets its violent pay-off.
On the way to part two, Lambert has used his own savings to pay off one of Youssef’s debts to Rachid. After receiving all the older man’s money, Youssef heads out the door, with a cheery, “So long, dummy” – as the subtitles translate “Tchao, Pantin”.
I mention this only because “Stooge” rankles.
An existential desperado who self-describes as “already dead” makes for a compelling vigilante, which is what Lambert becomes. Set off against an unglamorous Paris – never a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower – the worst part of town, cracked paint, dirt, where it’s always dark. Berri gives us neo-noir of a particularly grubby sort, shot in deadbeat noir style by Bruno Nuytten (who was DP on Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession).
The characters, lifted from Alain Page’s novel, start out thin but get thicker. Lambert’s past history is exposed, Youssef turns out to be a bit of a thinker whose apartment is full of books. He has a girlfriend, of sorts, and Lambert discovers Lola (Agnès Soral) also has a story to tell. Even bad old Rachid, who operates out of seedy bar Chez Rachid, becomes a little less one-ply. Operating on the edge of all this a cop, Bauer (Philippe Léotard), who turns up as if he’s going to deus ex machina the shit out of the situation but ends up becoming just as complicit as everyone else.
I’m being vague because I don’t want to ruin a very worthwhile movie. The acting is superb, the setting just right, the set-up and pay-off symmetrical. It’s pulp, really, but satisfying pulp. Coluche – born Michel Colucci – would only live another three years before dying aged 41 in a car accident. But this film won him a Best Actor César, and, like the character of Lambert, a whole new realm of possibility opened up for him. Which he could have exploited more than he did. But at least he, and we, have this.
Tchao Pantin aka So Long, Stooge – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
