Les Fugitifs

Les Fugitifs is a 1986 French comedy written and directed by Francis Veber, starring Gérard Depardieu as Jean Lucas, a reformed bank robber taken hostage by the clumsy would-be robber François Pignon, played by Pierre Richard. It was the third and final film that Veber made with the Depardieu–Richard pairing, after La Chèvre (1981) and Les Compères (1983), and it sold 4,496,827 tickets in France.^{1 • 2}

Cast and production

The cast combines the two leads with a set of marked supporting roles: Jean Carmet as Martin, a veterinarian who improvises as an emergency doctor; Maurice Barrier as Commissioner Duroc; Jean Benguigui as Labib; Roland Blanche as Idriss; Michel Blanc as Dr Bourdarias; Anaïs Bret as the little girl Jeanne; and Didier Pain as the dog handler.^{4 • 1} Anaïs Bret, in an almost silent role, was noted for her presence, and Carmet's veterinarian became one of the film's most remembered performances.⁵

Behind the camera, Veber worked with the cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, the editor Marie-Sophie Dubus, the composer Vladimir Cosma, and the set designer Gérard Daoudal. The film was produced by Fidéline Films with DD Productions, EFVE Films, and Orly Films, and originally distributed by Gaumont.⁴ Exterior scenes were shot in Bordeaux, Meaux, Nanterre, Nîmes, and Vaujours.⁹

Place in Veber's trilogy

Les Fugitifs closes the informal trilogy Veber built around the comic opposition between Pierre Richard's clumsy, gaffe-prone characters and Gérard Depardieu's strong, self-assured ones, begun with La Chèvre (1981) and continued in Les Compères (1983).¹⁰ Depardieu described the three films as stages in the pair's relationship: in La Chèvre he was "really a child," in Les Compères they tried to be adults together, and Les Fugitifs took the same opposition onto a more dramatic and social register.¹⁰

Compared with its predecessors, the film brings the two leads together early in the story and gives Richard's character a firmer temperament, so that he stands up to his accomplice. Critics have also credited the character of the mute little girl, who establishes herself in only a few sequences, and a finale with more tenderness and poetry than Les Compères had shown.¹¹ Le Monde's reviewer Michel Braudeau, writing the day after the release, called it "very great comedy, tender, fast," in which the lessons of the American masters are assimilated and reinvented in the French manner.⁸

Reception and box office

The film drew more than 4.4 million admissions in France, a score similar to Les Compères though below the peak of La Chèvre.⁵ With 4,496,827 entries it ranked sixth among films released in France in 1986, a year dominated by Claude Berri's Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.² It also sold more than 23 million tickets in the Soviet Union, where Pierre Richard has remained a major star.⁵

At the 1987 César Awards, Jean Carmet was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Francis Veber for Best Original Screenplay or Adaptation.⁹ The film was the last cinema collaboration between Veber and Pierre Richard; Veber later worked again with Depardieu on Le Placard (2001).⁵

The American remake

Walt Disney Studios bought the scenario of Les Fugitifs before the French version was even finished, a measure of how well Veber's comic machinery was regarded.⁸ According to a Variety account, Touchstone Pictures' Jeffrey Katzenberg solicited a screenplay from Veber at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival; Veber told him the plot of the film he had not yet shot, and Katzenberg decided on the remake and had Disney acquire the United States distribution rights to the French version.⁶

Veber himself directed and produced the remake, Three Fugitives (released 27 January 1989), with Nick Nolte in the Depardieu role and Martin Short in the Richard role, shooting in Los Angeles and Tacoma; the American budget was estimated in the mid-teens of millions of dollars against about $6 million for the French film.⁶ Disney delayed the American release of the French original until after the remake, and Veber predicted it would not reach cinemas at all, since the two versions were too close in time.¹² Le Monde noted at the time that a French filmmaker directing his own remake for Disney with an entirely American crew was a situation without precedent.¹³

References

1. Les Fugitifs, filmography page, Pierre Richard official site
2. Les Fugitifs, box office and audience reviews, AlloCiné
3. Les Fugitifs, visa and classification record, CNC
4. Les Fugitifs (Francis Veber, 1986), Cinémathèque française
5. Saga Francis Veber : Les Fugitifs (1986), Le Monde des Avengers
6. Three Fugitives (1989), AFI Catalog
7. Les Fugitifs, synopsis and cast, Télé Star
8. Michel Braudeau, "Une fillette et deux casseurs," Le Monde, 18 December 1986. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1986/12/18/une-fillette-et-deux-casseurs_2931947_1819218.html
9. Les Fugitifs (1986), cinema-francais.fr
10. 1986, Gérard Depardieu sur son rôle dans "Les fugitifs", INA
11. Test Blu-ray : Les compères + Les fugitifs, Critique Film
12. Leonard Klady, "The Import Business," Los Angeles Times, 24 January 1988. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-01-24-ca-37873-story.html
13. "Cinéma : Francis Veber tourne une nouvelle version des Fugitifs," Le Monde, 13 August 1988. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1988/08/13/cinema-francis-veber-tourne-une-nouvelle-version-des-fugitifs-le-rire-francais-a-hollywood_4091313_1819218.html

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

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