Micmacs: Un plan de locos

Micmacs a tire-larigot (2009); Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet; Starring: Dany Boon, Julie Ferrier, André Dussolier, Dominque Pinon et al.

The announcement that Jean-Pierre Jeunet was making a new film made me happy and after seeing it I am even happier. Mr. Jeunet has delivered some weird, but exquisite films and this one is no exception. It is like a crossover between his earlier films with Marc Caro and his later ones. There are the whacky characters with weird hobbies from his earlier work, but it's not as dark as those. It actually has a bright atmosphere, like "Amélie".

In the film's opening we see a soldier failing to disarm a mine. Then follows a cut to some apartment in Paris where a phone rings. Some boy's mother picks it up and starts crying, while we're watching the boy's face sadden. Jeunet doesn't need any dialogue to convey what has happened. We move forwards in time and we see the now grown up boy, named Bazil (Dany Boon), working in a video store, watching a classic film. Outside a chase is going on, shots are fired and a pistol falls. Bazil stands up to watch this scene unfold, when he's hit by a bullet. The camera moves in on the TV screen and when that film ends, the Warner Brothers logo appears and "Micmacs" starts. The opening credits remain in the black and white of the finished film and a classic Max Steiner score plays gloriously over the credits, which was great to see once more on the silver screen. In these first minutes alone we already witnessed some of the most creative film-making of the decade. Jeunet has always been a very visual filmmaker and this prologue alone proves that he masters the art of visual storytelling. There's no need for dialogue. After the titles we see a doctor deciding Bazil's faith. Getting the bullet out of his head can permanently paralyze him and leaving it in can cause death at any moment. A coin decides for the latter option. At home he's in for a surprise though: his apartment has been rented out and his job has been taken. Luckily he can get his hat back from some neighboring kids, but that's about all he has left. He decides to earn money by performing on the streets, where he is picked up by Placard. He takes him to a scrap yard where he lives alongside other outcasts of society. These are all weird characters in the best Jeunet fashion. There is Tambouille, who takes care of them like a mother. There's Calculette, the daughter of a carpenter and a sowing lady, who can measure up anything and anyone with one look. There's Petit Pierre, who makes strange puppets from old materials (like a dancing dress). Then there's a person obsessed with his Guinness Book of Records entry for fastest living cannonball, Fracasse. Last but not least, there's the snake lady named Caoutchouc, who can assume all sorts of unnatural stances. And let's not forget Remington, who is part of the gang too. Their little society collects junk, making it into all sorts of sellable things, thus giving it a second life.

On a day though, Bazil finds the weapon manufacturers responsible for making the landmine which killed his father and the bullet which struck him. He decides to get his revenge, but only with the help of the unique talents of his comrades. His plan is weirder than you could possibly imagine. It basically involves getting the two manufacturers to destroy each other. How this is done is truly unique and very funny. They gradually turn up the heat and start irritating both in the name of the other. The way in which the plot moves forward and how the characters interact is typical Jeunet. It's by no means a serious film, but Jeunet delivers his fantasy world with great conviction, yet not taking it too seriously. That's why all of it works and makes perfect sense within this fantasy world and why it's great fun. Jeunet also provides a lovely touch by making some self-references. On multiple occasions we see our main hero driving past a poster of this film and in one scene he's eaves dropping on one of the weapon tycoons, when he accidentally lowers his microphone in the wrong chimney and overhears a scene from "Delicatessen". Another great touch was showing the power of modern day media like Youtube.

All actors played their characters well, with their strange characteristics brought forward in a very believable and endearing manner. Dany Boon shines in a performance reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin. He makes his character funny, touching and sad without the aid of dialogue, relying solely on body language. He does have some dialogue, but it is kept to a minimum. Dominique Pinon is a joy to watch as always. Although we've seen him as strange characters before, he remains fresh and he delivers another great oddball performance as Fracasse. Julie Ferrier plays Caoutchouc, who is in need of love and a great deal of attention and she acts really convincing. During the course of the film she and Bazil fall in love, which is shown very subtle. This makes it a joy to watch and when they finally kiss, it is such a tender moment. The other actors making up the gang are also wonderful, as are the two weapon tycoons. They're played by André Dussolier and Nicolas Marié and they make for very convincing villains with some bizarre habits.

Beautiful visuals and shots add even more, making this film a treat on all levels. It's incredibly funny and sometimes very touching, but above all it made me laugh and smile. The film still delivers a serious message about weaponry though, without it getting lost in the fun and without giving you a guilty feeling about feeling happy afterwards. This film is like a cool summer's breeze: completely refreshing.

9/10.

When you think of revenge movies you generally picture a guy with a gun taking a swift and direct action against everyone who has ever wronged him. Guns are a theme here but not because our lead character, Bazil, uses one to fight injustice but because two prominent French arms dealers are responsible for his predicament. Bazil's father was killed by a landmine and Bazil himself is unwittingly shot by a stray bullet during a drive by shooting. Though he survives, the bullet remains in his brain causing him regular discomfort and meaning that he might die at any moment. This adds an underlying tension to the fairly subtle story as Bazil, out of work with nowhere to live, finds comfort with a group of fascinating sideshow style vagabonds who eventually become his allies in his battle against the greed, murder and manipulation of powerful arms dealers.

Aside from a truly riveting series of sly, witty and purposeful acts by this band of revengers, the film is also striking in its beauty with every scene presenting an intense array of colours fusing with incredibly intricate and detailed backdrops. These prevail particularly with the 'sideshow' who recycle scrap in to wonderful creations fresh from a fifties cartoon short. At one point Bazil sees a segment of an old cartoon where a character shoots another in the head. This depicts the correlation between the real world here and an animated fantasy-land with the epic and extremely clever revenge plan played out in much the same way that Sylvester chases Tweetie Pie or Wyle E.Coyote stalks Road Runner.

The films only fault is that sometimes is all almost too imaginative, barely allowing the mind to recollect what has happened before twenty or so other things occur, each steeped in a tranquil haze teasing the viewer's eyes like a mirrored tunnel encompassing a silent disco. Wonderfully indulgent movie, a treat for the eyes, ears, nose and mind.

By the director of Delicatessen and Amelie, this is closer to the earlier one. It's that mad jumble of images and daring camera-work again. And again it turns out to be a film quite unlike the one you were expecting. I'm sure someone has said this somewhere already, but it's worth repeating. I'm talking about Fellini on acid.

After an electrifying prologue in which our hero is orphaned, the screen explodes into a big-budget retro Hollywood opening and the story begins.

Almost right away our man Bazil, played by star of the French screen Danny Boon, is wounded by a stray bullet, losing his job after a long spell in hospital. He's saved from oblivion by a family of freaky misfits who live underground, surviving by rescuing the junk society throws out and giving it new life.

What Bazil really wants is to get his own back on the two arms manufacturers who messed up his life, and his new friends are the perfect mates for carrying out such a scheme. They include a human cannonball, a numbers genius, a circus contortionist and a robot inventor, and their plots are just as wacky as they are.

Talking of plots, the story, packed though it is with fantastic imagery as if it were a story about bad adults written by very clever children, races along regardless. The scene where Bazil gets shot is itself so much more than a simple zap with a bullet. It's a short film in itself, and the whole thing is full of chunks like that. It really is too much to eat at one sitting, and I would recommend a second look. You'll probably see me there, in the front row, my jaw in my lap.

For this review I'll assume you've seen Amélie which, if you haven't, you should see this instant before even finishing this sentence.

Ok you're still here (or you're back). As we saw in Amélie, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet gave us a visual feast displaying his original quirky style that can best be described as "cinematic OCD". Everything about a particular shot is meticulously designed: lighting, camera angles & movements, settings, props, action, dialogue and even music are carefully choreographed down to the most microscopic detail, prompting you to wonder if, in a parallel universe, Jeunet would be one of those guys you read about in the Guinness Book for having collected the toenail clippings of 5 generations of Kennedys. This style lends itself to great comedy, almost like a Rube Goldberg drawing that depicts some fantastic, enormous mechanical device whose purpose is to dispense toilet paper. We immediately smirk at the fact that someone purposely went to all this trouble to deliver something totally absurd. In "Amélie" (and in his 2 prior masterpieces "Delicatessen" and my favorite "City of Lost Children") Jeunet mixed this wacky, absurdist style with a really compelling, human story that was fleshed out with great character moments to contrast the absurdity. However, here in "Micmacs" the balance is tipped very heavily toward the absurd but without the human element that gave us such satisfaction in his earlier works.

I'll give you an example with the opening scene. The very first thing we are shown is a man being blown up whilst trying to diffuse a landmine. The scene is played from a distance without any context, and it rapidly cuts to a quirky, surrealistic reaction, which makes us play off the entire event as a joke. Dark humor, the same way we see someone in Pulp Fiction get their brains blasted all over the back seat of a car and the next minute we are laughing at the bizarre squabbling between Travolta & Jackson. This is a great way of presenting dark comedy; however it cannot carry an entire 1hr 47 mins. Eventually we need a human story or at least a challenging plot to give us the backbone.

I purposely avoided mentioning the plot until now because the plot is truly not the focus of this film. The story is about a man who is trying to exact revenge on the 2 sleazy weapons dealers who ruined his life, and to do this he enlists the help of a team of bizarre circus-performer-type outcasts whom he meets at a junk yard. That's really the entire plot for 1hr 47min, straightforward, with a few wacky surprises here & there but nonetheless very linear. And the problem is, much like with the 1st scene, Jeunet doesn't invest any time in trying to set up a human connection between the audience and the main character.

As a quick aside, I want to point out that Jeunet had originally cast Jamel Debbouze (the loveable grocery boy in Amélie) as the main character, but according to Wikipedia "artistic and financial disagreements" prompted Jamel to quit the production after 3 weeks. His replacement Dany Boon plays the role very emotionlessly which is kinda interesting in its own way, but as I keep saying, after 1hr 47min you realize that the film has failed to make a human (emotional) connection with you.

Ok that's the bad. Here's the good (and believe it or not I DO recommend this film, but I'm just trying to temper your expectations if you are a rabid Jeunet fan like me). The technical artistry is unparalleled. The amount of work, planning, rehearsal, and sheer vision that went into each shot must have been enormous. In the Making of Micmacs featurette we get a taste of that, and we realize how much attention was paid to the tiniest detail like what postage stickers would go on a box that appears on screen for only 0.75 sec. So if you're into cinema for sheer art's sake, don't miss this flick. You can check my review history to see how many hundreds of films I waste my time watching, and I can honestly say that I can't think of another film that comes close to this level of pinpoint precision.

In addition to the amazing composition & choreography of each shot, we get Jeunet's signature surrealist style which puts us in a timeless state of mind. Even though the story happens in contemporary Paris, it's a very nostalgic look, making us feel like we're in a different world altogether. If you watch movies to escape from the reality of life then this flick is definitely for you.

I enjoyed this film, but you can probably tell that I didn't enjoy it as much as Jeunet's prior films, particularly his first 3 ending with Amélie. If you're new to Jeunet you might want to start there rather than diving straight into this barrage of quirkiness. The title itself translates as "Non-stop shenanigans" and that's exactly what we get.

Jean-Paul Jeunet, director of "Amélie" and "A Very Long Engagement" returns with "Micmacs", the story of a lonely misfit named Bazil (Dany Boon), who after being accidentally injured in a shoot-out, is adopted by a band of other misfits. Together, they take on a band of arms-manufacturers whose products respectively injured Bazil and killed Bazil's father, by triggering tension between them.

As with previous films, Jeunet has produced a world of slightly-distorted reality, much like a dream. Although it does begin somewhat slowly, this is hardly a flaw, and the eventual escalation of the tension between the two forces of evil is truly winning. The ending, which I won't elaborate upon, is also delightfully funny.

There is one slight issue that I did have, which is not too big and actually has little to do with the film itself, but is still worthy of mention. As someone with a degree in French, I did find that the English subtitles were in some scenes passable yet not excellent replications of the original. Equally, I found it quite annoying that the subtitles provided in the British cinema version were clearly done for American audiences. I have nothing against American English, but it would have been nice for us over here in the UK to have had our own subtitles as opposed to a loan of the American ones. Yet enough with that groaning; "Micmacs" is a great near-perfect little film and I can recommend it wholeheartedly.