Cookies (1975)

• Year: 1975
• Released: 23 Jan 1977
• Country: France
• Adwords: 2 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187044/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cookies
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: French
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Runtime: 105 min
• Writer: Joël Séria
• Director: Joël Séria
• Cast: Jean-Pierre Marielle, Claude Piéplu, Jeanne Goupil
• Keywords: beach, painting, priest, portrait, underage sex, portrait painting,

6.6/10

Cookies Storyline

Henri is a middle-aged travelling umbrella salesman from Saumur who lives a sexless and unhappy married life with his puritan wife and two children. Painting is the only true passion of Henri but he also has an affection for female buttocks. One night, on the roads of Brittany he hits a boar with his car. Émile, a rude and carefree painter who lives in a cottage near Riec-sur-Belon meets him and invites him to stay at his house while the car is being fixed. Henri falls in love with his Canadian live-in girlfriend Angela who draws Henri’s attention with her beautiful buttocks. They leave Émile after a violent confrontation and move to Pont-Aven, ‘the city of painters’. Angela encourages Henri to continue his life as a painter and he sees this as an opportunity to leave his earlier life behind. However, Angela soon dumps him for Émile and Henri becomes a drunkard, butt of jokes in the town, and a painter unable to sell a single painting. Marie, the teenage maid working at the pension Henri stays, is apparently in love with him but he seems to neglect her because his mind is too occupied with Angela. However, Henri soon faces his true feelings for Marie. He finds pure love and a pair of beautiful buttocks in her and decides to make a new start in his life.

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Cookies Movie Reviews

Fundamentals of sex and art inspiration in the french seventies

Loosely inspired from the life of french painter Paul Gauguin, Cookies (french title Les Galettes de Pont-Aven, Joël Séria 1975) relates how a salesman of umbrellas (played by the hilarious then-43 year-old Jean-Pierre Marielle) rejects his former life and stern spouse to embark on a painting career. His pursuit of happiness and inspiration is marked out by several mistresses, the physical proximity and intimate smell of whom drive him to bliss — and boozy despair when they disappear. Several episodes reflect the contradictions of the early Giscard-d’Estaing era with witty humor, such as Marielle disguised as a traditional Breton singing a duo in a country show, or Dominique Lavanant as a dialect-speaking prostitute in traditional Brittany outfit. Most of all, many viewers will enjoy the moments when the touch and smell of a good pair of buttocks turn the half-dead Jean-Pierre Marielle into an apoplectic, ecstatic reborn. Many aspect of this enjoyable movie are exemplary of the aftermath of the 1968 movement of ‘libération sexuelle’ which provided inspiration to french independent movie makers and cartoonists (in particular, those of Marcel Gotlib, Claire Bretecher and Nikita Mandryka). But beware : some scenes of drunkenness are awkward and too long and may make the movie unsuitable for contemporary spectators, particularly those lacking familiarity with the smelly and ‘troisième degré’ humor of extreme Frenchmen in the seventies.

Les Galettes de Pont-Aven : Joël Séria directs a cult film about an ordinary man who wants his art to be taken seriously !!!!

In many ways, ‘Les Galettes de Pont-Aven’ remains faithful to 1970s, the time of its making when people did not have to worry much to lead a carefree life. Those viewers who are familiar with arts and the world of painters would not take much time to associate famous French painter Paul Gauguin with Pont-Aven. He shares a lot of similarities with Henri Serin, an ordinary man’s character played brilliantly by French actor Jean-Pierre Marielle who also started to paint somewhat late in his life. By directing ‘Cookies’, Joël Séria has put himself in the same league as Jean Renoir who was able to direct films about ordinary men who emerged as heroes. The entire film is based on the notion of respect bordering on appreciation and recognition which an ordinary man is seeking. He finds it after being part of different adventurous experiences. In the history of French cinema, ‘Les Galettes de Pont-Aven’ has achieved the status of a cult film. It was made in 1975 but continues to remain very relevant even in the modern times. It is recommended for those viewers who would like to explore some hidden gems of French cinema.

sex is good in Brittany

“Mais Ne nous Délivrez pas Du Mal” (1971) was a cannon ball in the landscape of French cinema. Its director Joël Séria staked out a position of shocking director who didn’t shrink from bad taste. The 1971 film was a work whose prevailing mood was evil. “Les Galettes De Pont-Aven” is openly dissimilar to the 1971 film. The general estimation might even deem it as its polar opposite insofar it is an invitation to the pleasures of senses and a hymn to life that Séria offers us as well as a glorification of the female body.

The master plan isn’t apparently that much fresh. Henri Serin (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is a mediocre umbrella salesman with a dreary life. His wife and children who scorn him (Séria shoots in a low-key manner, two sequences that tell a lot about the way she considers her husband. As for the children, one don’t see them). Fortunately, this mediocre, humdrum life is compensated by two passions: painting and sex. During a trip in Brittany, he makes the acquaintance of an offbeat couple Emile (Bernard Fresson) and Angela (Dolores McDonough) who galvanize him to bloom himself thanks to his gift for painting and his strong taste for sex. After he fled with this superb Canadian young woman, his perception of life improves.

The itinerary of a man who is weary of a mundane daily life at the beginning of a film and who is exploding with bliss in the end has been used many times before or since. But Séria’s effort conveys a communicative bracing jollity which makes the viewer leave with a big smile on his face at the end of the film. A search for happiness and the basic pleasures of life embodied by an original cinematography which seems to give a major part of the shots the aspect of small paintings. Séria’s stylish directing and writing are important enough to stop the film to become too crass and he often falls back on the suggested, a good weapon to make less wild improper moments. And there’s Brittany as the backdrop of Henri’s adventures where joy of living reigns. His road is scattered with colorful meetings. Claude Piéplu makes a (much too short) appearance as a bard whose household seems stormy. Women help Henri to fully live his passion for painting and sex. Of all them, coy Marie (Jeanne Goupil) is perhaps the most positive one because she showcases a heartfelt, pure sensitiveness to both Henri and the viewer. Maybe, her and Henri are going to live forever.

The name of the hero Serin means serene in French. That’s what Henri tries to be during his stay in Brittany.