Delicacy, as the philosophers point out,is the banana peel under the feet of truth.

Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch

Whenever I’ve made a film, I’ve told myself that 50 million people would be going to see it! And I was very happy. I had no certainty that this would happen, but it was what I wanted. At the time, the test of success was crystal clear to me: it was the first big blow to the patriarchy, deftly delivered. That is why it worked. Trois hommes et un couffin is also the upending of a great myth: the Three Kings and Christ as a baby girl. She is the one who will radically change the world view. It was a Scud missile that I wanted to send, and it hit home.

Coline Serreau, “Le Monde”, 20 October 2019

In 1912, the “Saturday Evening Post” published The Three Godfathers by Pe­ter B. Kyne, a curious adventure about a baby lost in the desert. John Ford adapted this story, first in 1919 (Marked Men), and later in 1948 with 3 Godfathers, a western with John Wayne and Pedro Armendariz, also inspired by dozens of stories and films on the same theme (three cowboys finding a baby, from Griffith to Wyler, not forgetting the brilliant car­toonist Walter Lantz). In 2003, Satoshi Kon drew on it for the lowlifes in Tokyo Godfathers, but had he seen Trois hom­mes et un couffin? Not that it matters, but one would like to think he did, as both films share a soft spot for the im­probable and for human reconciliation, by way of the inescapable truth that se­rious comedy always stems, in a small way, from tragedy (the cruel bane of those who are a little too liberated). But this is not the Far West or Tokyo; we’re in the Marais, Paris in 1985. The story is sim­ple: “Three idiots wise up”, an irresistible film about male motherhood and how the struggle to be happy can be resolved.

Émilie Cauquy