Micmacs, film, directed Jean-Pierre Jeunet.A bomb-disposal expert is blown up in the western Sahara. His widow goes mad with grief, abandoning her son to an orphanage from which he escapes in a laundry basket – only to be shot 30 years later by a stray bullet which leaves him brain-damaged.
When a story as potentially complete as this is dispatched within the first two minutes of a film, you suspect that the film director must have a plot of epic proportions up his sleeve.
And you wouldn’t be wrong. Micmacs is a continuation of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s line in quirky tragi-comedies, his characters a bunch of misfits inhabiting a surreal, colour supersaturated world.
The main character, Basil, is determined to avenge himself against the arms companies which have destroyed his life. His battle against them, aided by contortionists, poets and mad inventors, is immaculately plotted, and ultimately heart-warming despite its foreboding premise.
5 stars
