Pique in Darien

Pique in Darier

About 15 seconds into The April Fools, the film makers decide to UP THE VOLUME BY HAVING THE CAST DECLAIM THEIR LINES AT THE HEIGHT OF THE DECIBEL SCALE. From that point on, the din is ferocious, searing the hearing with a series of clangorous sketches.

A harried stockbroker, Brubaker (Jack Lemmon), lives on a pique in Darien, Conn., abraded by a frenetic wife and a splenetic child. At a Manhattan party, he meets a yielding blonde (Catherine Deneuve). The commuter programming abruptly breaks down, and the lovers spend the April evening on the town in the company of a romantic old couple, the Greenlaws (Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer). The astrologistic Mrs. Greenlaw advises: run away together. But like the film, she is dealing from the bottom of the tarot deck. If Brubaker's wife is a shrew, Catherine's husband is a pack rat. As played by Peter Lawford, he is an untruthful narcissist with hair of chestnut brown and sideburns of Dorian Gray.

Unfortunately, Deneuve is as poignant as an ice cube; Lemmon attacks the script with a flurry of Babbitt punches, then shrugs and mugs the rest of the weary way. The film's title is two months tardy; the subject--a satire of sex and suburbia--arrives several years too late.

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