The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish
The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish is a 1991 comedy film directed by Ben Lewin, starring Bob Hoskins, Jeff Goldblum and Natasha Richardson. The story, set in Paris, follows the fateful meeting of Louis Aubinar with Sybil, who brings into his life her last unfortunate lover, the Pianist. The plot is based on a short story by Marcel Aymé.
Plot
Louis Aubinar (Bob Hoskins), a humble, middle-aged photographer, specializes in religious pictures. Louis lives in a small apartment in Paris with his psychotic sister, Elizabeth, who cooks terrible meals, including grinding an entire sailfish into paste. His employer, Norbert, a prestigious religious articles curator, has commissioned a series of portraits of the Saints. Norbert decides to discard their next project, John the Baptist, and move directly to Jesus. Louis, who is already cash-strapped, faces the prospect of being fired if he does not find an appropriate model for Jesus. Louis' friend Zalman is also worried, as he was supposed to have posed as John the Baptist for the cancelled photo, and now his flu will interfere with another job in film-dubbing that he counts on keeping. He asks Louis to do him a favour and cover his part until he's well.
More details
| author | Ben Lewin |
|---|---|
| contentLocation | Paris |
| director | Ben Lewin |
| editor | John Grover |
| genre | comedy |
| keywords | attack birthday party dub force frédéric chopin grind jesus john the baptist meet meet cute orgasm pornographic film religious art sailfish saint stroke of fate talk traumatize understand |
| musicBy | Vladimir Cosma |
| producer | Michelle de Broca |
| publisher | BBFC Gaumont Film Company Rank Film Distributors UniFrance |
| theme | screwball comedy |