Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, and quite stupidly, for brief violence and sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.22.10
Buy DVD: Micmacs
• Buy Blu-Ray: Micmacs [Blu-ray]
Jean-Pierre Jeunet doesn't make mere movies; he uncorks richly imaginative and gleefully demented works of art.
In this country, he's best known for 2001's odd romantic fable, Amelie
, which also brought actress Audrey Tautou to the world's attention. Some of us had already taken note of Jeunet years earlier, however, as a result of 1995's The City of Lost Children
: a madcap dark fantasy that was anything but a simple kids' flick, instead deserving recognition as a memorably delirious Grimm's fairy tale. |
| The key element of the plan concocted by Bazil (Dany Boon, left) involves some divide-and-conquer stratagems; to that end, he has Remington (Omar Sy) impersonate the trusted associated of a venal arms manufacturer during a key phone call, while an attentive Calculator (Marie-Julie Baup) watches and waits to emply her own unique talents. |
Jeunet's fever-dream creativity makes him the French equivalent of Terry Gilliam; both have been responsible for some of the most visually engaging — if also eccentric — films made during the past few decades. Both also take their time; Micmacs is Jeunet's first film since 2004's less stylized and much more melodramatic A Very Long Engagement
.Micmacs also is a giddy return to the form for which Jeunet has become best known: adult fables populated by misfits who are no less endearing for their shortcomings. Indeed, such failings define them.
The world in Jeunet's films is recognizably our own, but a little bit more so. The freshly scrubbed and oh-so-charming Paris of Amelie owed more to Gene Kelly's vision of that fabled city, in An American in Paris
, than to the humdrum details of real life. Jeunet and longtime writing partner Guillaume Laurant have returned to that metropolis for this new story, which once again takes place in a dichotomous Paris that is both more attractive — and more harsh — than we're apt to encounter ourselves.The juxtaposed settings are fascinating all by themselves: the skylight at Galeries Lafayette intercut with a display of Lycra sports clothes; the Musee d'Orsay seen adjacent to a contemporary coffee shop; the romance of the Crimee bridge along the Canal de l'Ourcq contrasted with towering Art Deco office buildings.
