Bêtes blondes

It's really an UFO in the feel good sky of the French scene .

The hero awakes to a world which has forgotten him ,surrounded by food from a picnic with maggot scrawling :is he an amnesiac ,is he dead ,is he dreaming? The screenplay is very confused ,where characters appear and disappear ,where scenes go straight from one into another one with a stunning sense of ellipsis ; and most of the time it works,much to one's surprise .

In its form ,it's close to "Alice in wonderland " ,and in the movie field ,it may remind you of Bunuel 's "Le Fantôme De La Liberté " (the soldiers on manoeuvres in the forest) , Chabrol 's "Alice Ou La dernière fugue" (car crash ; the dead in the coffin;the latter itself inspired by the American indie " carnival of souls" ).

Alternately ,it's a gruesome comedy (the funeral and the meal where salmon does not taste like scallop paté : all this makes one think of a bad dream ), a spoof on the sitcoms (we learn that the hero is a TV star has been ), a melodrama (father and child reunion?), a fantasy and horror film (in fact from start to finish ,but particularly the meeting with the headless girlfriend, the naked dead among whom the hero is an intruder).

If little by little , Fabien's past is revealed (we know nothing from him in the first part) ,Yoni ,his son (?) ,remains mysterious till the very end : a gay (?) who has lost his boyfriend , a lieutenant(?) who has been away for a while and is not welcome as the biblical prodigal son ,a scout leader (the jacket he wears when he's with the plump girl in the car).

There are word games which might be lost on a non -French-speaking : the tltle "Bêtes Blondes" (blond beasts ) sounds like "Têtes Blondes " (=little ones ,a hint at Fabien's fatherhood?) ;the horrible sitcome which starred Fabien is called "Sois pas triste ,Patrice " (=don't feel blue,Patrice but it's untranslatable)

Not for all tastes ,but definitely off the beaten track!