A middle-age man (Jean-Louis Tritignant) picks up a pretty young woman (Jane Birkin). When he finds out she's a prostitute, he slaps her into submissiveness and then "rapes" her. She ends up adoring him for it, and he discovers his strange powers over beautiful women.Encouraged by his scheming friend (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a crippled, unsuccessful writer, he uses his seductive powers to seduce the wife of a business associate (Romy Schneider), and embarks on a campaign of shady land deals and political intrigue.
This movie works best if you take it as a satire or absurdist comedy. The character's strange power over incredibly beautiful woman is especially ludicrous. Most men would volunteer their left testicle to sleep with Jane Birkin and their right one to sleep with Romy Schneider; they would then be left castratti if they went on to seduce the likes of Florinda Bolkan (as a bisexual political power broker)and Estelle Blain (as a vapid movie star) as Tritigant's character does here. In one of the funniest scenes, the hero has to, in order to close a deal, either sleep with a wealthy woman who is "older than God" or marry an 18-year-old heiress. Hilariously, the young girl is eager to jump into bed with him, but refuses to consider marriage, so he has to make the ultimate sacrifice.
This is definitely a very black comedy which takes a lot of tragic and violent turns at the end, but in typical French (i.e. decidedly non-Hollywood)fashion it refuses to provide a tidy moral at the end or make its hero too sympathetic. As for the literal translation of the French title, "The Angry Sheep", I'm still trying to figure that one out.
