Cible émouvante / Wild Target / Petits meurtres à l'anglaise

Little murders the english way/Moving Target

I saw the trailer for a film called Wild Target a the beginning of a DVD some time ago and I thought it strangely looked like a blatant rip-off remake of one of my favourite French comedies Cible émouvante. 

I completely forgot about it for a while because I have a short attention span and saw the trailer again last week.

Turns out it is definitely the same story, the main character is called Victor Maynard in both films. And, and the English title for Cible émouvante is Wild Target.

Cible émouvante is a great comedy, it’s Pierre Salvadori’s first film starring Jean Rochefort (best male voice in France by a mile), late Marie Trintignan and late Guillaume Depardieu.

It’s the story of Victor Maynard, who is 64 and a professional killer and sort of falls for a young woman he is supposed to kill. There is also a younger apprentice involved.

I haven't seen the film in a while and decided to add it to my list of DVDs I should own, but I remember it being an off-beat comedy (refer to a previous title to bring people into familiar territory), placing more emphasis on the dialogues than on slapstick.

The trailer for the remake seems that everything is bigger, faster, stronger, louder.

What I found interesting was the cross-overs in translations.

Cible émouvante is a play on word again “cible mouvante” (moving target) and “émouvante”, translated by “moving” too. 

So it would have been easy to keep that nice and simple.

But someone decided to call the film “Wild Target” which was also kept when the British film was made.

So that left the French in a pickle, as there is no obvious translation for Wild Target.

They decided to go for “Petits meurtres à l'anglaise” (Little murders the English way) which is a rule 4 (refer to a previous title to bring people into familiar territory) of “Petits meurtres entre amis” (Little murders amongst friends) which was the “translation” for Shallow Grave.

I guess someone thought that these 2 films were alike, despite the fact they have nothing in common apart from being set in England.