PETIT CON

Adapted from writer/director Gerard Lauzier's popular comic strip, PETIT CON's title (politely translated as little schmuck) accurately describes Michel, an intelligent but insufferable 18-year-old who fancies himself a revolutionary imprisoned in the “family gulag.” Michel (Bernard Brieux) vents his spleen in his journal when he isn't seeking relief from terminal horniness with sultry, street-wise Salima, an Algerian who prefers her ex-con lover. They share his pigsty room above his long-suffering parents' apartment. Rejecting his parents' middle-class values, Michel retreats to an aging-hippie commune but finds them even worse. Communication between Michel and his emphatic father (Guy Marchand) may well have come too late.