Whetting appetites for the Carte Noire IFI French Film Festival is this French/Italian/Irish oddity from the IFI Irish Film Archive collection.

Purple Taxi follows a group of emotionally troubled expatriates living in tax exile in an Irish village. Dr. Seamus Scully (Fred Astaire) is the taxi driver, a retired physician. Philippe (Philippe Noiret) is a French novelist recently relocated to Ireland, where he befriends Jerry (Edward Albert), an American who left his home after the death of his girlfriend, and Taubelman (Peter Ustinov), father of Anne (Agostina Belli), a beautiful young woman who cannot speak. Jerry becomes infatuated with Anne, while Philippe tries to win the heart of Jerry’s sister, Sharon (Charlotte Rampling). Presented here in English (but filmed simultaneously in French as Un Taxi Mauve) with a Chieftains score.