Des nouvelles de la planète Mars (2016)
Directed by Dominik Moll

Film Review

After Lemming (2005), a thriller that was too weird for its own good, and Le Moine (2011), a spiritual fantasy that is weird tout court, Dominik Moll returns to the dark, unpredictable comedy of his first notable success, Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (2000), and offers up a similarly quirky portrait of mid-life crisis.  Des nouvelles de la planète Mars exploits the same plot device of this earlier comedy-thriller, namely the havoc wreaked on a dysfunctional family by the arrival of a potentially dangerous stranger, but, lacking a sufficiently strong premise beyond that, it drifts without purpose and merely supplies a series of mildly entertaining moments rather than a satisfying whole.  After a promising intro, the film has difficulty maintaining its momentum and goes completely off the boil in its last act.

Obvious though its imperfections are, this isn't a bad romp - Moll's most entertaining offering since Harry.  The director's eccentric humour - which tends to involve annoying infestations of small creepy animals, pets doing unspeakable things and mutilation caused by flying axes - is always welcome, as are his surreal flights of fancy which drive home how dangerously unstable the main protagonists are as their lives spin out of control.  There is imagination and flair aplenty on both the scripting and directing fronts, but it's all pretty scattergun and doesn't add up to much - just another humorous amble across the perilous mine-strewn battlefields of mid-life crisis.

The only thing holding Des nouvelles de la planète Mars together is the comedy rapport of its lead actors François Damiens and Vincent Macaigne.  The down-to-earth Damiens makes the perfect foil for the scarily deranged Macaigne and their scenes together provide the film with its funniest and most truthful moments.  With every other character looking like a silly archetype, it is left to these two amiable dog-eared thesps to lend the film at least some semblance of reality and prevent it from going completely off the rails.  Moll and his cinematographer Jean-Francois Hensgens supply some striking visuals which go some way to exteriorising the chaos that is overtaking Damiens's character as he loses control and tumbles into a Kafkaesque night of the soul, but in the end the whole show is let down by a script that is neither particularly original nor sufficiently focused to leave us fully satisfied.

Film Synopsis

Since his divorce, Philippe Mars, a mild-mannered computer programmer, has found it ever more difficult to keep his grip on reality.  When he isn't perplexed by his children's latest eccentricities - his son is apparently turning into a militant vegetarian, his daughter is now obsessed with making a success of her life - he must put up with the demands of his ex-wife and an artist sister who has the weirdest tastes in art.  And then Jérôme forces his way into life, a former colleague who lost his job after throwing an axe at his boss.  With no income and nowhere to go, Jérôme persuades Philippe to let him stay with him until he can straighten out his life.  Philippe's already precarious existence is about to spin out of control altogether...