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Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Foreign > Italy > A Slightly Pregnant Man

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


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