No Ordinary Fool

Films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet do not come around that often. However, they are usually well worth the wait, as no one else quite paints his cinematic canvas or brings such childlike magic to an adult world like he does. Perhaps only the computer whizzes at Pixar get close. Moreover, the belated decision to freshen up his familiar style with the idiosyncratic slapstick and gobbledygook of Dany Boon proves to be an astute one. For, along with cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata, they combine to create a work here that is simply overflowing with inventive ideas and lush photography.

Here, though, the unconventional plot sees the little guy take on two large and unscrupulous weapons manufacturers. Boon plays Bazil, a video store clerk whose father was killed whilst clearing a minefield in North Africa. When a freak accident renders Bazil both unemployed and homeless, though, he ends up falling in with an unusual crew of junk scavengers. In the meantime, he also stumbles across the two companies responsible for making the weapons that killed his father and left him with a bullet lodged precariously in his head. With this improbable group of events thus set up, no time is then wasted in coming up with an ingenious but complicated plan for retribution and the rest of the film is all about its wild implementation.

Put another way, Micmacs starts out as a tongue-in-cheek melodrama and ends up as a bright and breezy cartoon. Disappointingly, the principal villains (André Dussollier and Nicolas Marié) are underwritten by Jeunet. However, they are more than made up for by a colourful assortment of heroes that include the extrovert malapropist Remington (Omar Sy), the fearless contortionist La Môme Caoutchouc (Julie Ferrier), and a no-nonsense matriarch in Tambouille (Yolande Moreau). For the most part, the gags are inoffensive, goofy, and reflective of the warm and hopeful tone that Jeunet typically imbues such films with. At the same time, some of the humour is phonetic in nature, which does become a little diluted by the sub-titles.

There is also a surprisingly political tone to this film. Certainly, no apology gets made for representing the armaments industry as being hopelessly immoral. In one of his better scenes, Marié’s character even remarks that it is actually better that their weapons now cause fewer fatalities, as the injured and maimed represent a bigger problem for their customers’ enemies to have to deal with. Equally, there is more than one reference to a degree of greasiness in the relationship between the current occupant of the Élysée Palace and big business. However, the net effect of such themes is ultimately just to add a layer of black humour on top of the film’s more typical fare (if a Jeunet film can ever be described in mundane terms).

In fact, this is a sumptuous, exquisite, and hugely entertaining film, on the whole, which ranks right up there with the director’s best. That said, the presence of explicit, and even sadistic, violence in some of the scenes did surprise a little.