Le Viager

Le Viager is a 1972 French comedy directed by Pierre Tchernia, who wrote the screenplay together with René Goscinny, the creator of the Asterix comics. Set in motion in the 1930s, the story follows the Galipeau family, who acquire a charming house on the Côte d'Azur from the elderly Martinet through the viager system, agreeing to pay him a monthly annuity for as long as he lives. The problem is that Martinet stubbornly goes on living: decades pass, the payments never end, and the burden grows intolerable, until the desperate family resolves to speed up the seller's death. Across this dark farce, which runs from the 1930s to the 1970s, Goscinny mocks an arrangement he considered immoral and lampoons twentieth-century French history. Michel Serrault plays the annuitant Martinet, while Michel Galabru, Jean-Pierre Darras and Claude Brasseur portray members of the dreadful Galipeau clan. Filmed around Saint-Tropez, La Garde-Freinet and Paris, the picture attracted more than two million viewers in France and brought Serrault wider recognition.