To accuse Tango (as some undoubtedly have) of the misogyny that it flings off the screen by the shovel-load is surely to miss the point entirely: this is a film, as its director is at pains to point out, about misogyny. Whether or not it deals successfully with its chosen subject is a different matter entirely.

Amateur aviator Vincent (Richard Bohringer) murders his wife's lover one day by forcing his car off the road, then proceeds to dispatch her by sawing through her safety-belt and looping the loop in his biplane to celebrate their anniversary. Much to his surprise, however, he is found not guilty, mainly thanks to the judge, Francois (Philippe Noiret), sitting on vital evidence - wife killing, he tells Vincent, doesn't really constitute murder anyway. And when the wife of his nephew Paul (Thierry Lhermitte) leaves him, fed up with his adultery, the kindly uncle enlists the services of the reluctant Vincent to murder her as well.

It's clear from the opening twenty-minutes or so that Leconte is having fun here - a widescreen, Technicolor experience, packed with aerial photography and daring stunts. Once the trio are matched up though, the film settles into the classic road movie tradition as they strike out for Africa, discovering that Marie (Miou-Miou) is working for 'Doctors Without Frontiers', on a road littered with all the expected events and incidents: Paul's increasing madness and self-doubt; their nicely judged encounter with a woman in a motorway cafe; Paul's bet that he can seduce any woman in a hotel dining room inside three minutes.

All of this is liberally spiced with the knowing philosophy of Francois - "Women are fantastic as long as we don't have to live with them", "Every man gets caught for the pleasure between the legs" - that is patently so ridiculous the audience is left with little to do but laugh. Leconte himself has said that he sees the message of the film as maybe men and women are not meant to live together, which may be neither here nor there as a concept in itself, but is rooted in a comedy so broad that any note of seriousness the director is attempting to strike is comprehensively washed away. What is not is the very clear assertion that the women in here are the stronger partners - Madeleine (Judith Godreche) wresting control of her life from a smothering husband and using the trio to her own ends; Carole Bouquet as the hotel guest who turns the tables on Paul; or a waitress' teasing brush-off of Vincent.

The problems with the film are two-fold, however. Firstly, Leconte is a director with an undeniable sense of brevity, with none of his features exceeding 90 minutes to date; less is more. But at even 88 minutes, Tango seems a little overlong to support itself. And more fatally, this comes as the third of his films to reach the UK, after Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser's Husband, both very small, delicate pieces, and two of the very best films to be released here in recent years. Alongside these then - and despite some nice playing, particularly from Noiret - Tango was only ever destined to be too broad, too light, too absurd to truly satisfy its audience. Substantially better therefore than the majority of US comedy (imagine the remake possibilities), but falling some way short of this director's own best work.