Louise-Michel (2008)
Directed by Gustave de Kervern, Benoît Delépine

Film Review

After first gaining recognition as actors with a particular penchant for comedy, Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine found further acclaim as film directors with their debut offering, the off-the-wall road-movie Aaltra (2004).  This was followed by an unsettling fantasy offering Avida (2006) and then their biggest hit to date, Louise-Michel (2008).  Taking their cue from the Coen brothers, Kervern and Delépine turn in a deliriously funny anti-capitalist romp that is shot through with jet black comedy and savage sideswipes at commercial exploitation of the masses by profit-hungry employers.

Directing a torrent of  viciously barbed cynicism towards popular indignation against unscrupulous bosses, this is just the kind of film that is likely to go down well in France at the present moment.  It came out just in time - in the wake of the credit crunch - to benefit from widespread public hostility towards capitalist exploitation.   Louise-Michel was not only a hit with the public, it was also well-received by the critics and was awarded the Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario for its screenplay in 2009.

As in other Kervern-Delépine offerings, the film makes the most of its impressive principal cast, with Yolande Moreau and Bouli Lanners making an extraordinarily entertaining double act as the most unlikely two-person execution squad in history.  The same year, Moreau won acclaim for her marvellously understated dramatic performance in Séraphine (2008), but she is also a superlative comic actress, always at her best when playing colourful eccentrics in such dangerously unpredictable fare as you'd expect to find in the Kervern-Delépine stable of oddities.

Here, the ever-delightful Moreau is well-matched with an equally off-beat comedy performer, the multi-talented Belgian star Bouli Lanners, hilarious as the hired killer with no talent for killing.  Benoît Poelvoorde, another great actor who is equally adept at drama and comedy, adds further muscle to a tirelessly executed and brilliantly conceived comedy, with some other familiar faces - Mathieu Kassovitz, Albert Dupontel - cropping up from time to time to up the film's stark craziness even further.

 A very welcome departure from the slew of crass, predictable mainstream comedies that have come to dominate French cinema in recent years, Louise-Michel is a well-timed burst of full-throttle surreal satire.  It is an undoubted triumph for its writer-directors, who deserve credit for taking one of the most topical and depressing themes of the time and, by drinking deep from the well of unfettered weirdness, delivering what is arguably the most inspired, certainly the most daring, French film comedy of the decade.

Film Synopsis

Jobs are increasingly hard to come by in northern France, which is why the workers at a textiles factory in Picardy become anxious when a nasty rumour begins to circulate in the town.  It seems that the factory's owner intends closing down his premises and relocating to another region to reduce his manufacturing costs.  To buy himself some time and deflect attention away from the impending closure, the boss offers his staff a present to show how much he values them - a shirt embroidered with their first name.  One morning, when the workers turn up for their usual shift they are met with a grim surprise - the factory gates are locked.  It seems the rumours were true after all.  Their inconsiderate boss has done a midnight flit and left them without a livelihood. 

Louise is one of the many women on the payroll who now finds herself without work and scant chance of finding a new job in a region of exceptionally high unemployment.  Embittered, seething with rage and in no mood for mercy, she sets about orchestrating a suitably vicious plan of revenge.  Pooling their redundancy money, the women are able to engage the services of a professional killer, who is now tasked with finding their former employer and murdering him.  The man they choose for this deadly assignment is Michel, a small-time criminal who has never killed anyone in his life - and shows little aptitude for doing so.  Realising that Michel stands little chance of fulfilling his contract by himself, Louise decides she must lend him a helping hand...