Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
The children of Harpagon, Cléante and his sister Elise, are each in love but they still haven’t spoken to their father yet. Harpagon is a miser who wants to choose the right man and the right woman for his children. Based on Molière’s play.
This 1980 French adaptation of Molière's L'Avare is a fairly straightforward theatrical-to-screen translation. The plot faithfully follows Molière's classic comedy of errors centered on the obsessively miserly Harpagon and the romantic entanglements of his children — solid and time-tested but offering little beyond the source material. Acting in such productions tends to be competent and stagey, capturing the broad comedic rhythms of the original farce. Cinematography is functional and TV-movie adjacent, with little visual invention — typical of theatrical adaptations of this era. Novelty is low since this is one of many adaptations of a 17th-century canonical play with no distinctive reimagining of the material. The ending resolves neatly in classical comedic fashion with reunions and reconciliations, serviceable but unsurprising.