Pastry

UNLIKE MANY RECENT American movies, which often leave behind the sour aftertaste of burnt pizza, cute French petit-fours such as Coup de Tete impart no flavor at all. They slide down smoothly, provincial realism and honest emotion buried beneath the sweet, slick icing of a clever plot and anti-bourgeois humor.

Patrick Dawaere plays the reluctant hero of this comedy of rape and revenge. He is a marvelously simple and impulsive actor, last seen here in the overrated Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, where he played the lover with the pocketbook library. In his latest film, he scratches his grizzly chin and narrows his tired eyes with the charm of a runty mutt who must scrounge to survive on a diet of crabgrass and crusty bread. Dawaere's puppylike affability extends to his awkwardly rolling gait, which takes him down highways, through bathroom windows and across manicured gardens on a quest for hilarious revenge.

"Coup de Tete" means "hothead" in French and Perrin, Dawaere's shuffling maniac, is certainly a hothead, a clever village idiot who knows, at least what idiocy he has perpetrated. And what idiocy he has not. One frustrating day, when nothing goes right for the luckless Perrin, he decides to leave town, to remove his boyish good looks and soccer talent from the clutches of the petit-bourgeois burghers of Trincamp, a quaint French ville whose occupants lust for a national soccer championship. But before Perrin can escape, the local cops nab him for a rape he didn't commit.

Two dreary months in prison pass before the town fathers, desperate for a right wing on their now-successful soccer team, order Perrin's release. His free-world escapades, soccer conquests and unique knack for revenge on the morons who framed him make Perrin a lovable idiot-savante in the best Moliere tradition. Equally delightful is the quiet affair between Perrin and the rich, beautiful, sexy woman whom he allegedly attacked.

Annaud, who garnered an Oscar for his first feature film, Black and White in Color, directs with ease and self-confidence. He knows that to succeed, his story must be a life-like dream. And Coup de Tete has a marvelously fluid, dreamy quality. Pastel colors spread with warmth and details--nightstand accessories--are not overlooked.

But like a pleasant dream, the details fade as soon as the film ends. Annaud and Dawaere, lestetes-unis, have great fun showing us the delicate power of restraint, even extending their satire to religion. But they never manage to draw us into their world. It ultimately remains much like the tight-knit, snobbish French villages they try to ridicule: neat, petty, and deluded by a mistaken sense of self-importance.