Film review: Micmacs (Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a masterful creator of universes, or rather parallel universes. The world of his film is recognizable but it i'nt just the same we live our everyday lives in. Jeunet takes our world and adds another dimension. Or takes one away as you like. Jeunet's world is a version of ours, ascending into fairy-tale (Amélie), descending into nightmare (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) or transcending into something more general and timeless (A Very Long Engagement).

Micmacs is no different. And at the same time it is: Never before has Jeunet's universe been so close to our modern world, never before his visual languge so close to realism. And not even in A Very Long Engagement has Jeunet commented so directly on the world we live in.

The story is simple: A man whose father was killed by a land mine gets shot in the head by a stray bullet and is joined by a group of rather eccentric people most of which have a special talent to take revenge on the bosses of the companies who produced the land mine and the bullet.

Unlike his earlier films, Micmacs takes a long time to find both its rhythma and its distinctive look. This has two basic reasons: Jeunet seems to feel he has a lot to explain before he gets into the middle of things. The second is new French comedy superstar Danny Boon. He has a hard time adapting to the special Jeunet style of acting and stumbles through miuch of the film's first half like a clown lost in the wrong circus.

But it would not be a Jeunet film if it dis not find its rhythm before long. And much of this is to do with what is probably the key Jeunet quality: imagination. The film is so rich with fantastic, surprising, funny, bizarre ideas that boredom has no chance. Another strength: Jeunet creates and depicts his characters with so much love that the viewer has no chance but to be moved.

And so the film gathers speed evolving into a wild, strange, funny and often grotesque hunt in which the roles of the hunters and the hunted change sometimes but which grips the viewer with its high energy, great ideas and fascinating characters. The world of Micmacs may look a lot like ours but it follows its own rules, its own values, its own logic.

In the end, this is vintage Jeunet: a gripping story, absurd, visually unique, warm-hearted and hilariously funny. Micmacs may not be on the same level as Jeunet's best films which fascinate from the first second to the last but it is still a fascinating and thoroughly unique piece of cinema - and highly entertaining, too.