Hibernatus
- Selon vous, où est votre grand-père ?
- ...
- Selon vous, où est votre grand-père !!!
- Lequel ?
- Grand papa Fournier!
Hibernatusi works on a very 60s premise : the Legion d'Honneur-covetous Hubert de Tartas (able to mention each antecessor all the way to Louis XIII) is shocked to discover that the grandfather of his chere amie lives, after having been preserved for some decades in the ice of Greenland. And consequently is stuck with him (by order of the Secretary General of the Ministry of Whatnot, a place where they very seldom have occasion to plaisanter).
Living-in inlaws to the power of two plus the element of surpriseii. Add to that we're in France, which means the hibernal grandfather recognises his niece as his mother, which pushes the woman's husband out the door, turns her son into an impertinent cock and moves her daughter in law into a very fitting soubrette role. Wouldn't it all be so comfortable...
The one important scene is the one where the two representatives of the state (already ubiquitous state and already impertinent cca 1960) are summarily dismissed by the lord of the manor in certain terms : "I've seen enough of you, have the courtesy of leaving your bills on the way out." Indeed no other world is worth living in. Bring the Bourbons back, I've had it with this two and a half centuries of Fourierist republican nonsense.
———- 1969, by Edouard Molinaro, with Louis de Funes, Claude Gensac. [↩]
- Seeing how you're reading this on the Internet you're probably too young to get it at all. Let's just say that fifty years ago it was not the useless and unemployable youth that was cozying up in the bed and pantry of the older folk. Quite the contrary : back then the older folk were the parasite class so to speak.
Thus the premise brought up to date would be something like "After thirty years of nursing Junior is finally married and living on his own. Parents rejoice. One month later he accidentally falls into a time backwards machine and he's the five year old backwards man all over again". I think Tom Greene did it pretty well. Or at the very least can walk backwards faster than you can. [↩]
