Gabriel Aghon's 18th century French costume romp allows the Carry On esprit to be conflated with the gravité of the Encyclopaedistes and their chief dictionary-maker and iconoclast Denis Diderot, a philosopher played for a long time with no clothes at all on him by Vincent Perez as he poses for a nude portrait by visiting painter Fanny Ardant.
But it's soon clear that deeds not words are the matter of this movie, set in a chateau visited by the grim cardinal (Michel Serrault) who's already suppressed the anti-Church work and seized the home-printing presses churning out dangerous new idées.
Stuck at compiling the entry under Moralité, Diderot and Co take time off to define earlier and later concepts such as Nudité (see above); Eunuque (exemplified by a black masseur whose "main part" can stay up for ever); Avortement (never something that makes a woman happy); Homosexualité (something that nearly always makes a man happy); Blasphème (what everyone does in this Enlightenment, thus causing Cardinal Serrault almost to drop dead with compassion fatigue as servants queue for confession).
It requires Kenneth Williams, Sid James and Hattie Jacques to make it ruder, but it generates some Python-esque inspirations such as Au Claire de la Lune convincingly played on an organ constructed from live pigs who honk the melody when their bottoms are smacked.
The Libertine
Cert: cert18
