Georges might always have felt it is the clothes that make the man. No wonder, reeling from the short end of a divorce, penniless and with his credit card cruelly cancelled by a heartless ex, it is a coat of the skin of prey that speaks to him. Abandoned to the fates like an old, toothless grizzly, thrown aside like an expired, unfilled hunting tag, Georges is born again in a toilet. Well, not exactly in the toilet. His old self dies along with his old jacket in the toilet and his new self, a shark swimming amongst sharks, swims again. Not in the toilet. It is complicated.
This is a movie for a time that needs something different when everything seems the same, dull, pointless, lacking in direction. One minute there is drifting, the next there is direction.
One minute the hunted, the next the hunter. Lost in the herd becomes the killer of the herd.
What better way to define oneself anew than to make a movie? Show business has been such a panacea for so many, saving lives otherwise lost to the drudgery of a suburban home, two-child family, office bound cubicle, regular paycheck. All that is required is that artistic muse, that presidential inspiration, that Franklin benevolence. Green backs. Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane did it in “The Producers.” Jean Dujardin as born-again shark Georges does it here.
As it turns out, Denise (Adele Haenel) is no rich widow, but a barmaid with a bigger heart than a bank account. No matter, to fund a film is an honor, almost an obligation, really, in the hands of the gifted and by now barking mad Georges. A silent partner with money, a gift from heaven to the director, and so turn the wheels of cinematic creation.
Sadly for Georges, the wheels turn in an all too familiar pattern for the new director, as his silent partner wises him up to the facts of Hollywood. He needs a producer.
Several nice twists and a nonsensical series of events becomes a story that means something. Funny insanity becomes murderous, not funny insanity. A fan blade from a cheap motel room becomes a samurai’s honored tool. Like a vison right out of Tarantino, what this life needs is class. Violence may be needed to win the war against the false costumes of mundane everyday life.
It could be cautionary tale of blind ambition, a story of spirituality versus carnality, virgin art and filthy lucre or a simple saga of the absurdity of life. One of those fever dreams with just enough reality to make it scary. Nothing succeeds like success until the mantel of the hunter is mistaken for the prey. Or the artist flies too high, too fast, and is brought down by the hubris of his own mastery over fate. Nature takes its course, in the wild as at the box office.
Do not leave until the final credits role. They are the nails in the coffin, one way or the other.
Rating: 7/10
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