Director: Otar Iosseliani Year: 2007 Rating: 4.5 Country:
France
If this passes for French irony and satire I expect I could go a long time
without another piece of it. The charms of this film eluded me like a dying
quail. Fanciful and absurd to a fault, this presents a fable of the transitory
illusion of power in modern day France but it is so haphazard and jumbled
that I soon lost patience with it. Vincent is a Minister of Culture and spends
his time accepting tacky gifts from his constituents and berating his mistress
for buying expensive even tackier statues. In his office resides a group
of nameless flunkies that come and go with pointless papers to sign. As well
as a tame leopard that lies about waiting to be petted. Vincent is blamed
for some large protests and without much remorse hands in his resignation.
Now a free man, he spends the next few days drinking, getting shit dumped
on him, talking with his elderly mother (played by actor Michel Piccoli for
some odd reason) and consorting with prostitutes and old mistresses. It is
all done though with no particular narrative drive – just odd whimsical lazy
shaggy dog sketches that add up to nothing as far as I could see.
