General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Les Bronzés font du ski

Les Bronzés font du ski is a 1979 French comedy directed by Patrice Leconte and written and performed by the Paris café-theater troupe Le Splendid. It is the second film in the Bronzés series, moving the group of friends introduced in Les Bronzés (1978) from an Ivorian vacation club to a winter sports holiday at Val-d'Isère, where new romantic entanglements and mishaps culminate in the team getting lost in the mountains.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	22 November 1979 (France); a restored version was re-released on 25 January 2017¹
Director / producer	Patrice Leconte; produced by Yves Rousset-Rouard for Trinacra Films²
Screenplay	An original screenplay for cinema, not a stage adaptation, written mainly by Thierry Lhermitte, Gérard Jugnot, and Christian Clavier, with Michel Blanc adding his own touches¹^•³
Filming location	Val-d'Isère and its ski area; shooting began 5 March 1979 and ran for two months⁴^•⁵
Key crew	Cinematography Jean-François Robin; music Pierre Bachelet; editing Noëlle Boisson⁶^•⁷
French box office	About 1.5 million admissions, fewer than the first film's 2.3 million⁸
Ratings	Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 83%; IMDb 7.4/10 from about 10,000 users; AlloCiné 4.0/5 from more than 57,000 ratings²^•⁹^•¹

Spoilers

Premise and characters

A year after meeting at a vacation club in Côte d'Ivoire, the friends reunite for a week of skiing at Val-d'Isère, where three of them now work.¹⁰ Jérôme (Christian Clavier) and Gigi (Marie-Anne Chazel) are married; Gigi runs a crêperie while Jérôme practices medicine. Bernard (Gérard Jugnot) and Nathalie (Josiane Balasko), reconciled and newly rich, own a timeshare apartment in the resort. Popeye (Thierry Lhermitte) sells ski equipment in a shop actually run by his wife, who is unfaithful to him with his cousin, while he tells his friends he manages it. Jean-Claude Dusse (Michel Blanc), still single and hopeless at seduction, takes ski lessons to approach an instructor. Christiane (Dominique Lavanant) arrives with Marius (Maurice Chevit), a married man much older than she is.⁴^•¹¹^•¹²

The film is built as a succession of comic sketches rather than a tightly plotted story: evenings of fondue, mulled wine, and local liqueurs, chairlifts and drag lifts, off-piste attempts, visits to local chalets, and a mountain trek that goes wrong.¹³ Scenes that became widely quoted in France include Michel Blanc's Jean-Claude stuck on a stalled cable car singing "Quand te reverrai-je, pays des merveilles", the "planté de bâton" ski lesson, and the tasting of a local drink, "la foune", with shallot liqueur seasoned with garlic juice.¹⁴

Production

The idea of a sequel came from producer Yves Rousset-Rouard before the first film was even finished; the actors and director, initially reluctant because they felt Les Bronzés was complete on its own, were won over by its box-office success.¹ Unlike the first film, which adapted the troupe's stage play Amour, coquillages et crustacés, the sequel was written directly for the screen, with Leconte deliberately steering toward a sharper, "meaner" humor than the original.¹^•³

Shooting at Val-d'Isère. Filming began on 5 March 1979 and lasted two months, with the crew shooting continuously on the chairlifts among real vacationers.⁵ Lhermitte and Clavier were strong skiers; Jugnot had no style but got down any slope; Michel Blanc, Marie-Anne Chazel, and Josiane Balasko were beginners coached by Stéphane Clavier, Christian's brother, a ski instructor and assistant director, and the actors were almost never doubled.⁵ The ski instructor who teaches Jean-Claude the "planté de bâton" was played by Fernand Bonnevie, a genuine instructor at the French ski school in Val-d'Isère, chosen by Leconte for his authentic Savoyard accent and sun-weathered face.¹² Local residents appeared as extras.¹⁵

Reception and cult status

At its release the film drew about 1.5 million admissions, less than the 2.3 million of Les Bronzés, although Le Monde's retrospective judged it the better-constructed film.⁸ Repeated television broadcasts then built its reputation: the paper notes that reruns of both films became countless and that the Grand Rex in Paris organized "soirées Bronzés".⁸ AlloCiné's audience summary makes the same point, saying the film's modest theatrical start was repaired by television broadcasts that made it one of the most popular French comedies.¹⁶

Contemporary ratings reflect that standing: 83% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, 7.4/10 on IMDb, and 4.0/5 from more than 57,000 AlloCiné users.²^•⁹^•¹ Many French viewers rank it above the first film; Leconte himself called it "really very funny, and no doubt meaner than the first".³

Place in the series and legacy

The film is the second of a trilogy directed by Leconte: Les Bronzés (1978), Les Bronzés font du ski (1979), and Les Bronzés 3: amis pour la vie (2006), which outperformed both predecessors at the box office.¹⁷^•⁶ Its lines and situations remain part of everyday French ski-culture references, to the stated surprise of the film's authors, and Val-d'Isère still promotes the locations, including the Tête de Solaise drag lift and the church of Saint-Bernard de Menthon, that appear on screen.¹⁸^•¹²^•¹⁹ A restored version by Studiocanal circulated in theaters from 2017, and the film is available for digital rental or purchase on French platforms.¹^•²⁰

References

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