The Rumpus Review of Micmacs
The Rumpus just published my long, conflicted review of Micmacs, the latest offering from Jean-Pierre Jeunet:
This may be a damning admission for any critic to make, let alone the editor of a film section, but I don’t really know how I feel about Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest film, Micmacs. I’ve been thinking about it for the past month, after two viewings with wildly different audiences – one a deathly silent, tiny press crowd, the other a giddy festival crowd, easily provoked into prolonged laughter – and perhaps because of this, I can’t quite settle on one judgment. Essentially a slapstick farce about one man’s revenge on a pair of rival arms dealers, Micmacs is a film I want to love, because it’s basically a fun movie that succeeds as a comedy, if you’re in the right mood; but the underlying subject matter is so serious, and Jeunet takes it on in such a confusingly oblique way, that I haven’t been able to rid myself of a queasy feeling about the whole thing.
posted: 10 June 18
under: The Next Frame