MICMACS: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

LFF: Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain even if it means you might drop dead at any time? Oe would you rather have the bullet taken out and live the rest of your life as a vegetable? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is scrap metal worth more than landmines? Can you get drunk by eating waffles? Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? What's the human cannonball record? All these questions and more are answered in 'MICMACS', the latest dazzlingly conematic outing from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a satire on the arms trade which grounds this director's cinema of fantasy firmly in reality. Dany Boon leads a terrific cast including Andre Dussolier, Dominique Pinon and the matchless Yolande Moreau in a thrilling comedy about one man's plan to destroy two big weapons manufacturers, with a little help from his friends. Few directors are more imaginative and inventive in creating their own distinctive on-screen worlds ('Delicatessen', 'Amelie') and the aesthetic sensibility at play in 'MICMACS' is breathtaking. Better yet, it works in tandem with pacy edge-of-the-seat storytelling and no end of visual gags and witty wordplay.

MGP: Beautifully photographed and rapidly paced, the film is, for the most part, a series of visual gags as the hero sets out to
get revenge on the manufacturer of the landmine that killed his father and the manufacturer of the bullet lodged in his brain.
That their offices and factories face each other proved a little confusing at first but this did not really matter as the hero and his new-found friends take their revenge. The various scenes fit together well and the several set pieces are not telegraphed but fall naturally into the narrative to the extent that it would be invidious to single out any one for more praise than the others; similarly, the cast as a whole provide a well-tuned and effective ensemble.