La Tête à l'envers

Thank goodness for a well-crafted, old-fashioned comedy with sensible editing, excellent performances and a witty plot structure. "Wild Mouse" is a truly humorous, enjoyable movie. With gentle satire, the pathos of our human foibles is shown with finely drawn relationships. Although there is a likeness with Woody Allen's schemes here nobody is driven over the edge into extreme violence and tragedy. The main protagonists are Georg, who for years has been an erudite but somewhat snobbish and fierce classical music critic and his wife, a psychotherapist and counselor who at 43 has a belated desire to become pregnant. However, all their efforts have been fruitless, causing bilateral blaming and stress which she is unable to address despite her proficiency in such matters. Meanwhile, with the media business in decline Georg is made redundant but does not have the nerve to tell her. Instead he pretends going to work whilst helping an old school chum to run a fair ground roller-coaster, the 'Wild Mouse'. At the same time, he is taking feeble revenge on the chief editor who fired him by vandalizing his car. Then the story gets more complicated and comical… The film's characters are cocooned within their own preconceptions and limitations, as well as being trapped and pushed by work and social expectations, but they are not fundamentally malicious. Exasperated by such pressures they might however, act irrationally and get themselves into a 'spot of trouble' with some hilariously funny outcomes. I liked 'Wild Mouse' a lot and left the cinema smiling, whilst feeling quite reflective and slightly sad too. I'd rate it four out of five or a little more.