This movie is about the interaction of a professional player and an average woman, both after their golden years, in the fortysomething age. Elric tries to keep himself sane while coping with his gambling addiction, which every now and then leaves him so broke he can´t afford a bag of groceries. Suzi is an average woman, who has just broke up with her lover when Elric meets her. Every gambler has a collection of superstitions, and these superstitions compel him to have Suzi by his side when gambling at the roulette. Both make a lasting effect on each other, and their gambling goes simultaneously with their man-woman relationship. I couldn´t tell more without being a spoiler, so that´s it for a summary of the flick. Good character building, uncompromising acting, competent direction, anything brilliant nor clumsy.Nice entertainment, shows decadence without leaving sadness in the watcher. 6 out 10.
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lonx12 February 2003
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mehobulls4 September 2020Brilliant. "When I lose, I see the beauty of the world". The fact that Jacques Dutronc isn't exactly in the same acting league as Bulle Ogier is no drawback at all. In fact, it gives his appearance a "ghost-like" character. You him throwing the fruit away he just bought with his last money, you see him throwing cigars away after just one puff. Here's one unhappy man in search of something he doesn't understand.
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jgcorrea25 November 2019Tricheuyrs (1984) is an edgy film about gambling and addiction. Very much 1980's in spots. It's Barbet Schroeder's continuation of his exploratory fictions of ultimate states and experiences of limits: drugs (More, his first film), masochistic enjoyment (Mistress, with Bulle Ogier) and Barfly (on alcoholic drift and crazy love). With Tricheurs, the excitement of the game is staged through a violent addiction to luck and loss: we follow the nihilistic saga of a couple formed by Jacques Dutronc and Bulle Ogier, each serving as a talisman and an accomplice to the other. They're led by the frenzy of the game, from a table of baccarat to a roulette, from one casino to another, from Madeira to Macau. This is an absorbing chronicle of two anti-heroes.
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evening18 May 2022Elric has just enough meal money to purchase a pear, and, if he wants to buy a woman a drink, must steal off to the pawnshop to hock his watch.
Sucking on a cigar, and kicking back a stiff one, Elric's (Jacques Dutronc) fixated on his next big gambling haul, which he inevitably loses back to the indifference of the roulette wheel.
Elric's routine is upset by a call girl (Bulle Ogier) sick of getting gypped by her pimp, and a depraved fellow gambling addict (Kurt raab) intent on scamming the house -- "The cheat is a continuation of gambling by other means."
No one can save Elric except maybe himself, but by movie's end he's careening toward murder or suicide. It's a pretty grim portrait.
I hadn't been aware of the easy-on-the-eyes Dutronc, and discovered on Wikipedia that he's a famous French singer. Definitely worth viewing is his youtube video "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'eveille." -
boblipton29 April 2022Jacques Dutronc is a gambler, who plays at all the elegant casinos and loses. He meets Bulle Ogier and they click, but he still continues to lose. Then he meets Kurt Raab who recruits him for his cheating operation; Raab is a 'topper', who sneaks in his bets after the roulette ball has stopped. They travel around the world to all the elegant casinos, but lose all the money they win through cheating playing roulette honestly. Then he runs into Miss Ogier again, and they head off on their own operation.
Barbet Schroeder's film contrasts the elegant and ever-expanding casino operations with the raw hunger of the players, and even the cheaters. It's a dry movie, with the hungers of the leads kept below the surface, except for Raab's bizarre insistence that he is the greatest cheater in the world. -
Turfseer10 November 2022Tricheurs (The Cheaters) is the last film Director Barbet Schroeder made before deciding to try his hand at directing in the US for a while. I'm not sure why he found the story so interesting that he was compelled to direct it.
Tricheurs is about a "high-roller" gambling addict Elric (played by French pop music star Jacques Dutronc) who meets a woman Suzie (Schroeder's real-life wife Bulle Ogier) at a casino located in Madeira, Portugal, an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean.
I'm not sure exactly who Suzie is but I think she's a fellow gambling aficionado who has just been dumped by her gambler boyfriend.
Elric gradually becomes attracted to Suzie but his addiction takes precedence.
The plot is a two-pronged affair. First Elric is approached by Jorg (Kurt Raab), a professional cheat who claims to have mastered the scam of "topping." It involves distracting the croupier of a game of roulette where a deft cheater can place a bet AFTER the game supposedly is completed.
Elric abandons Suzie and goes on a worldwide jaunt with Jorg where they manage to fleece numerous casinos.
Now bankrolled with cash, Elric pays a man big bucks to provide him with a radio controlled transmitter which enables him to control a magnetic ball during a roulette game.
Suzie is entrusted with a remote-control mechanism hidden in a cigarette pack and the two at first earn a large amount of ill-gotten winnings. But addict Elric blows most of his profit after Suzie walks out during the middle of the scam.
With a little money left, Suzie returns the next morning and makes back all that was lost. When the ball "explodes" during the middle of a roulette game, Jorg, in a disguise, is arrested at the table on the false assumption that he was responsible for the scam.
Elric and Suzie end up purchasing Elric's dream chateau where his father used to be the manager.
Tricheurs is basically all plot with little character development-unless you consider the chronicle of a gambling addict to be an insightful exploration of human behavior.
The acting is good enough, but the story is much of the same thing throughout-gambling and more gambling.
Again, what exactly was the purpose of making a film such as this? I suppose there's a modicum of suspense as we wonder if the two cheats get away with their scam. Ultimately most people don't need a film like this to convince us that gambling is an unproductive as well as a self-destructive life stratagem.