Movie review

By Donna Chernin

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'Pardon Mon Affaire, Too' more than sequel

When we left Etienne last year, he was standing perched on top of the ledge of an apartment building clad in only a short robe.

Then, the sympathetic philanderer tried to recall the luck, the audacity and if he must say so, "the sheer ingenuity" that brought him to this precarious station in life.

In "Pardon Mon Affaire," Etienne resorted to outlandish extremes to cover his adulterous tracks and to keep his wandering ways from his perky but watchful wife. The more he schemed, the more he bungled.

In the sequel, "Pardon Mon Affaire, Too," turnabout is fair play.

Now it is Etienne's wife who is

the one doing the cavorting. Or at least that is how it first appears to her distraught husband. The film is being shown tonight through Sunday at the Cedar Lee Theater as part of the International Film Festival.

Early in this French farce, Etienne accidentally discovers a mysterious photograph when it falls from his wife's purse. The picture shows a silver-haired man embracing his wife Marthe. While the woman in the snapshot is definitely Marthe, the identity of the man (who is seen only from the back) remains a mystery.

Etienne is first stunned, then crushed and finally jealous. He is also exceedingly curious.

Our hero reasons that showing his wife the photograph would

Etienne (Jean Rochefort). ' suspects that his wife (Daniele Delorme) is having an affair in "Pardon Mon Affaire, Too" at the Cedar Lee Theater tonight through Sunday.

somehow complicate matters. "Deeply injured by the folly of women, I decided to solve the mystery alone."

a room across the street, complete with camera and other detective devices.

He becomes increasingly short tempered at work where he is trying to create a cartoon version of the Bible and increasingly jealous of his wife at home. Naturally, Etienne's sudden burst of bizarre behavior arouses the suspicions of his wife, who begins to believe that her husband has another woman in his life.

A sheepish, proper air about Jean Rochefort made him look clumsy instead of devastingly virile in the original "Pardon Mon Affaire." Here his serious formality also works hysterically in his portrayal of a hassled husband turned private eye.

The film was written and directed by Yves Robert, who, with his wife Daniele Delorme (who plays Marthe) brought us the hilarious "The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe" a few years back. Instead of the confusion of mistaken identity of that earlier comedy, here we have confusion of mistaken assumption.

"Too" takes on a double significance in the film's title. "Pardon Mon Affaire, Too" doesn't just mean this is a sequel, but “Excuse My Affair as Well." In this daffy comedy, everybody is either having an affair, suspecting someone they love of having one or trying to get one started.

Certainly no one is involved in what we would ordinarily call a conventional relationship, and that also provides a good share of frivolity and farce. Besides exploring the marital swings between Etienne and his wife, the movie spends considerable time with the cavorting of Etienne and his three close buddies. The opening line of the film is "You really lack maturity," which pretty well sums up the childishness of the fellows' pranks. Yet there is also an innocence, camaraderie and a loyalty that is uplifting. Here the friends purchase a country home together, only to discover it is uninhabitable.

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The same buddies return in the sequel: Bouly (Victor Lanoux) who still looks like a French Rock Hudson, first finds himself living with his children, his girlfriend and her children. Living conditions become more crowded and compli cated when Bouly's ex-wife moves in, followed by her young musician boyfriend, and topped off by Bouly's girlfriend's husband.

The doctor, Simon (Guy Bedos), still has raging battles with his possessive mother in between treating patients, and Daniel (Claude Brassyer) attempts to curb his homosexuality and marry a lesbian considerably older than himself.

Etienne's hackneyed attempts at private-detective work provide a good deal of the comedy. He sends his wife a lavish plant, encloses a blank card and then sneaks behind the curtains to see whom Marthe Before "Pardon Mon Affaire, will call to thank. Later he fabriToo" wraps up, everything becomes cates a business trip to Eastern further complicated. The final seEurope, only to station himself.inquence is about as hilarious and

intricate as any one could find in a contemporary sex farce. In French, the film's title translates "We Will

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All Meet in Paradise," but with this cast of real characters, it's fun just meeting them on earth.