Micmacs (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2009)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs a tire-larigot (France, 2009) is a delight. In the film Jeunet returns to his usual methodology of using societal misfits in bizarre fantasy situations (see: The City of Lost Children, Delicatessen, Amélie ). I'm assuming that Jeunet has used the word Micmac because Micmac's are indigenous, native Americans and the word literally means family. The strange family that is brought together in Jeunet's film includes: Bazil (Danny Boon) a man hit with a stray bullet, which remains lodged in his head. Buster (Dominique Pinon) an obsessive record-breaker whose name is in the Book of Records. Elastic girl (Julie Ferrier) a female contortionist, Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle) an expert lock picker, Remington a note taker who writes everything on an old typewriter and speaks only in cliches, and Calculator (Marie-Julie Baup) part mathematician/part tailor who can look at you and immediately know your measurements. The group also includes a cook - Mama Chow (Yolande Moreau) and a man who makes mechanical toys from bits and pieces collected and recycled from the local junkyard. Indeed the concept of recycling pervades this film. From the start there is a collage of ideas - Bazil, a video store employee watches The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) for the umpteenth time and recites every line delivered by Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) just before he is hit by a stray bullet. There's a flash back in which Bazil's father is killed by a landmine and the film begins in earnest with orchestral music and the film's title and list of characters scrolling down in period typeface over a glorious scene of a cloudy sky, suggesting the Black and White era of film-making. But what I loved, apart from the zany narrative in which Bazil, along with his recycling comrades, decides to avenge his father's death and his own brush with death by finding those who manufacture and deal in weapons, is the rather obscure way that Jeunet alludes to the value attributed to human body parts and our strange relationship to technology. One of the chief employees of a weapons company that Bazil spies upon, is Nicolas Thibault de Fenouillet (Andre Dussollier) who collects the body parts of key historical figures and is willing to trade weapons and cash to acquire an eye of the Italian politician Benito Mussolini. The bullet in Bazil's head is a constant source of anxiety, causing him headaches and facial spasms, and technology in its various forms throughout the film often fails. However, the ingenuity of the toys and other technological contraptions that pervade this film, along with the quirky characters and incredible humour made this film a joy to watch.