Micmacs à Tire-Larigot

We primarily watch films on TV in France but the week-ends we try to visit the cinema in La Châtre, as today.

Micmacs à Tire-Larigot is a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director who - among other films - directed Amélie (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain).

In this film the story circles around the main character Bazil (not John Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers), a role created by the popular comedian Dany Boon.

Bazil is working in a video store and one day he witnesses a gun fight between two men outside the shop and accidently gets hit by a bullet. The surgeons decide not to take the bullet out, as this could risk his life but this bullet turns him into another person, where previous memories and intellectual capacities are disrupted.
He meets a group of individuals living in a junk yard, made into a home and head quarter from where they try to make a living and take advantage of their different skills. Bazil becomes obsessed with revenging the weapon manufacturers selling the weapons and bullets, turning his life - and others - upside down and his friends are more than willing to help him destroying these two companies.

They come up with an intricate and very complicated plan aiming at the elimination of these two companies, taking advantage of each and everyones special 'gifts' in life.
One of them is extremely strong, another a former circus artist known as the canonball man, a third a woman being a human 'rubber person', being able to bend her body in all kinds of extraordinary ways.
This is a typical Jeunet film when it comes to aesthetics and the 'fantastic' story of extraordinary men and women, not being super heroes but unique in a multitude of ways. A story of friendship between people disregarded by society.
There is a quiet, mild humour with some almost 'slapstickian' moments but not hysterically funny.
The plot is rather predictable but it's however a rather charming film although the combination of moral statements and humour doesn't really merge too well.
It's as if Jeunet wanted us to bethink the atrocities the weapon manufacturers are responsible for, but dressed in a comedy it becomes a little bit of this and a little bit of that, overshadowing the serious message he seems having the ambition to convey.


(Poster displaying the different characters copied from: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WkKZJVG5wTk/TS1wL-UwBkI/AAAAAAAC8uc/TyFqsDz6kmo/s1600/micmacs-poster-3.jpg)
(Photo three of the friends copied from: http://www.twivi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/micmacs-a-tire-larigot_dany-boon-465x310.jpg)
(Photo 'rubber woman' copied from: http://www.cinemovies.fr/images/data/photos/16303/micmacs-a-tire-larigot-2009-16303-2078441583.jpg)