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Louise-Michel (Film)

by Mark Demetrius | October 07, 2009 08:34 | Edited October 07, 2009 09:39

Complete with an absurdist black humour and a bizarre collection of farcical set pieces, Louise-Michel is a hit and miss affair.

If you like black humour, you'll love parts of Louise-Michel. Its tone of resolute tastelessness is established in the opening moments, courtesy of a very funny scene in a crematorium. The central message here is that fat cat employers are unscrupulous in their exploitation of the workers, a fact so incontrovertible that the film creates its own oxymoronic genre: realistic farce. The premise is that a bunch of female French factory workers are laid off. One of them, Louise (Yolande Moreau, recently seen in Seraphine), suggests that they pool their compensation money and hire a hitman to "whack the boss." Louise is semi-literate, and says things like "Me don't like books", but shows enough initiative to line up a self-styled "security manager" called Michel (Bouli Lanners) for the grisly task. "He's done a lot of things," Louise shrugs. "Kennedy, that was him."

What follows is a bizarre comedy of errors, as the supposedly gung-ho Michel proves to be both too inept and too soft for the job. The action moves to Brussels and London, and there are hilarious set pieces and effective sight gags as the plot gets steadily darker. It would not be right to give too much away: suffice to say that there are memorable moments alluding to terminal cancer and 9/11! One problem is that the absurdity prevents any suspension of disbelief, and any empathy with the characters.

Louise-Michel is very much a hit and miss affair (no pun intended). It definitely has its moments, but also its longueurs. The title is, incidentally, a play on the historical figure Louise-Michel, a French revolutionary and social reformer - to whom the film is dedicated. And there are great soundtrack songs by the appropriately unhinged Daniel Johnston. Don't leave till the closing credits are over.