Enfermes Dehors is the story of a glue-sniffing homeless person who stumbles upon a policeman committing suicide and decides to put his abandoned uniform to good use. Initially this means using it to steal food from the police canteen but soon Roland discovers that wearing the uniform gives him certain powers and responsibilities, particularly tracking down the kidnapped child of a former porn star whose picture he had fallen in love with.
It is tempting to say that English-speaking audiences are largely ignorant of Dupontel’s work as a writer and director, but in truth he is best known over here for his performance opposite Vincent Cassel in Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. Despite this film show-casing Dupontel’s abilities as an actor rather than as a writer and director, it is strangely indicative of the kind of artist he is because Enfermes Dehors speaks of an emerging French creative community that explores darker themes and ideas in the middle of the ocean of onanistic, self-indulgent middle-class angst that makes up the bulk of the French film industry.
Dupontel is an artist who wears his creative relationships on his sleeve. In addition to the presence of his Muse Claude Perron (owner of the best cheek bones in Europe and the leading lady in all of Dupontel’s films), Enfermes Dehors features many of the same actors as his earlier films the brilliant Bernie and the cruelly over-looked Le Createur. The feeling of a creative community is only increased by Dupontel’s enlisting of Benoit Debie, who was also responsible for the unique visual stylings of Irreversible, Innocence and Calvaire as Director of Photography on all four films. Debie and Dupontel work brilliantly together to bring to the screen Dupontel’s own particular blending of the dark with the whimsical and the bleak with the fairy-tale.
However, where the likes of The Mighty Boosh and Tim Burton blend these styles so as to create an intellectual vacuum that is neither dark nor whimsical, Dupontel inspires himself from Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King to tell a story that is fantastical and warm-hearted but ultimately set in a world of sex, violence and decay. Nowhere is this more elegantly demonstrated than in the character of Marie who goes from hacking into the city’s emergency PA system to sing her lost daughter a lullaby to offering a pervert a Director’s Cut DVD of a Caesarian birth with complications. In Dupontel’s hands, the styles compliment each other perfectly because he realises the basic truth that dark and gritty is no more realistic than warm-hearted and whimsical. Both exaggerated viewpoints are expressed in his well drawn and engaging characters. In fact, while many people try to combine dark and whimsical, nobody does it quite the way Dupontel does. However, he seems aware of the popularity of his approach and by featuring characters who work in sex shops and horrible grocers, he seems to be making a sly dig at the faux grittiness of Jeunet’s Amelie.
Where most comedy films try to be as inclusive and broad as possible, it is a delight to see a film that so revels in the alternative characteristics of its comedy so unashamedly and that does so with such a high gag-rate. With the possible exception of 10 minutes leading up to the final conclusion where the need to service the plot overtakes the need to be funny, the film is consistently funny and entertaining with hardly any jokes that misfire and a number of lines that you’ll find yourself quoting to your friends.
If I had to find something to criticise, it would be that the central love story feels slightly rushed. Perron and Dupontel spend so little time on screen together that the final act where Marie sees the lengths to which Roland has gone to find her daughter and falls for him sees not so much fairy tale as just silly. But this feels like an unfair criticism as it is clear throughout the film that Roland’s love for Marie is slightly otherworldly so to begrudge the otherworldly ending would be to begrudge one of the film’s defining characteristics.
On the whole, while perhaps lacking the viciousness of Bernie or the satirical bent of Le Createur, Enfermes Dehors marks a successful return to the director’s chair for one of France’s leading comic directors. One can only hope that it will be successful enough to ensure that we won’t have to wait another 8 years for Dupontel’s next film as those years robbed us of one of the most exciting and creative film-makers around.
Dehors
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