La Chèvre

La Chèvre (English release title La Chevre or The Goat) is a 1981 French-Mexican comedy directed and written by Francis Veber, in which a clumsy accountant is sent to Mexico alongside a private detective to find a kidnapped heiress whose defining trait, like his own, is chronic bad luck. It stars Pierre Richard as François Perrin and Gérard Depardieu as Campana, and it was the first film to pair the two actors.^{1 • 2}

Production and casting

A first pairing. La Chèvre was Francis Veber's second film as director, following Le Jouet (1976), and the first time he worked with his favored duo of Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard.² Veber recounted on television that the choice of Depardieu was not obvious: the actor had never made a comedy film before, and Veber had to be persuaded that he would be the ideal partner for Richard.⁴ For Richard, the film continued the maladroit burlesque persona he had established in earlier comedies, with François Perrin standing in the line of his signature characters.⁹

The supporting cast includes Pedro Armendáriz Jr. as the captain, Jorge Luke as Arbal, Sergio Calderón as a prisoner, Maritza Olivares as a prostitute, Robert Dalban as a technician, and Michel Fortin as the man with the trolley at Orly.³ Filming locations recorded by Film France include Paris-Orly Airport in Val-de-Marne.¹⁰

The film was produced by Gaumont, Fideline Films of Paris, and the Mexican state company Conacine (Corporación Nacional Cinematográfica), with Alain Poiré as delegated producer.^{1 • 5} Cineuropa lists the producing countries as France, Mexico, and Malta.¹¹

Release and box office

The film opened in France on 9 December 1981 and drew 7,079,836 admissions there.³ Le Monde later described the result as a historic success, with seven million spectators seeing Depardieu in the film at Christmas 1981.¹² A media-education survey places La Chèvre first at the French box office for 1981 with about 7.1 million viewers.¹³ Abroad, it was released in Norway in March 1982, West Germany in March 1982, the Netherlands in July 1982, and a series of other markets through the 1980s, with a Belgian re-release in 2019.¹¹

Reported runtimes differ across reference sources: the Cinémathèque française lists 95 minutes, AlloCiné 1h35, Larousse and several TV guides 1h31, and Cineuropa 90 minutes.^{1 • 14 • 15 • 11}

Reception and legacy

A popular trilogy begins. The film's success made the Richard-Depardieu team a viable comedy pairing and led Veber to repeat it in Les Compères (1983) and Les Fugitifs (1986), a run that Le Monde has described as representing the best of French popular comedy of the 1980s.^{2 • 16} On AlloCiné, spectators have given the film an average of 3.8 out of 5 from more than 20,000 ratings, with commentators highlighting the chemistry of the duo and the physical gags.¹⁴

The premise traveled: an American remake, Pure Luck (1991) directed by Nadia Tass with Martin Short and Danny Glover, is generally considered inferior to the original.¹⁷ Gaumont prepared a 2K restoration, and the film has remained in circulation on television, home video, and streaming rental platforms in France.^{2 • 18} In the United States, Kino Lorber offers the film for theatrical and educational screenings with English subtitles, describing it as evoking Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, the Pink Panther films, and Buster Keaton while keeping a distinctively French comic flavor.¹⁹

References

1. La Chèvre (Francis Veber, 1981), La Cinémathèque française
2. La Chèvre, ADRC
3. La Chèvre, Pierre Richard site officiel
4. Le jour où Pierre Richard a craché du ketchup sur Gérard Depardieu, Europe 1
5. La Chèvre (1981) company credits, IMDb
6. La chèvre, Télé Star
7. La chèvre, Télé 7 Jours
8. La Chevre, Cinéma Français
9. Rétrospective Pierre Richard, La Cinémathèque française
10. La Chèvre, Film France CNC
11. La Chevre, Cineuropa
12. Les années 1980 de Gérard Depardieu, Le Monde (2023)
13. Media Education 2024, 20(3)
14. La Chèvre, AlloCiné
15. la Chèvre, Larousse
16. Les héros de « La Chèvre » changent de tête, Le Monde (1996)
17. La Chèvre (1981), Nrmagazine
18. La Chèvre, JustWatch
19. La Chevre, Kino Lorber Theatrical

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1980s › Comedy-dramas of the 1980s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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