Review | Micmacs
Jean-Pierre Jeunet returns to filmmaking after a five-year absence with this relentlessly quirky caper fantasy. His time away doesn’t seem to have broadened his horizons any, Micmacs is imbued with the same visual invention and light-heartedness that characterised Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. Considering how roundly adored those films are, it is hardly a bad thing.
A familiar mix of fairytale and mischief, Micmacs is the impossible story of underclass revenge on society’s warmongers. The rebels of the piece are a weird clan of kooky itinerants, scavengers who live in a steampunk treasure-trove beneath the city dump.
Each member of the ragamuffin gang brings their own unique gifts to the table – abilities that invariably end up being very necessary plot devices in the film’s convoluted con job. There’s the aptly named contortionist, Elastic Girl; a world record-obsessed human cannonball; Calculator, the super-human math wiz; a supreme pickpocket; and Congo, a dialectically challenged fortune-teller.
Introducing us to, and eventually leading, this motley crew is Bazil. Recently and under entirely misfortunate circumstances, Bazil was shot in the head while wasting his life away at his video store job.
The doctors flipped a coin to see whether they would remove the bullet and leave him vegetated, or leave it in with the ever-present risk of sudden death. Walking away from the operation more-or-less fully functional, Bazil finds himself jobless, homeless and with a certain urge to extract revenge on those he sees as responsible for his predicament – the profitable munitions companies who birthed the bullet that now rests in his brain.
The absurd characters and ridiculously convenient plot are all part of the ride, as anyone familiar with the director’s previous effort well knows. In exchange for our suspension of disbelief we are rewarded with a wonderfully intricate production design, filled with inventive marvels probed by a tirelessly mobile camera.
Sweet, charming and full of energy, Micmac’s is a quietly uplifting tale of underdog triumph told without a hint of modernist cynicism – a rare thing indeed these days.
