Rating: B
Dir: Fabrice Eboué
Star: Marina Foïs, Fabrice Eboué, Jean-François Cayrey, Lisa Do Couto Texeira
a.k.a. Barbaque
I was diverted on my way to this review by the movie introducing me to the concept of Vegan Alerts – film reviews which tell readers things like “Cassie pulls out milk from the fridge for a cat”. This matters because “When a character onscreen does something seemingly innocuous such as eating a burger, for me it represents animal abuse behind the scenes.” Odd. For me, it represents… eating a burger. But as someone on Letterboxd noted, this film would trigger “a fucking thesis” of Vegan Alerts. Or, I venture to suggest, a brain aneurysm in their creator. For it’s rare (or, at least medium-rare) a film goes so persistently for the jugular.
Vincent (Eboué) and Sophie Pascal (Foïs) run a failing butcher’s shop in a small French town, and their marriage is also on the rocks. Matters are not helped when vegan activists raid and vandalize the store. Driving home one night, Vincent recognizes a cyclist as one of the activists, and runs him over. Sophie – a fan of true crime documentaries – recommends dismemberment. After all, Vincent has both tools and the skills. Somehow, however, the meat ends up in the shop, and the “Iranian pork” becomes a top seller. The bad news is, the corpse offers a limited supply of product. The good news? There’s no shortage of more or less suitable vegans on the hoof locally. Just as soon as Vincent gets over his initial squeamishness.
There’s an almost unrelenting cynicism here, which is quite refreshing. Nobody here is what you would call “nice”. The Pascals are serial killers, their friends are rich assholes, and the victims tend quite heavily towards deserving it. Though the most obnoxious of them all is their daughter’s boyfriend, who turns a dinner party into a moral lecture, with smug statements like, “What you call Chateau Saint-Emilion, I call Chateau Auschwitz.” Sadly, he doesn’t end up as a charcuterie platter, but plenty of others do before the end credits. Things likely reach their peak in a glorious sequence, splicing nature documentary footage of predators hunting their prey, with Victor doing his thing (top), leaping out of trees to pounce on his vegan victims.
Inevitably, it doesn’t end well, though in a way which seems as if the makers felt obligated to tack on a moral message of, “Remember, folks: the killing and consumption of fellow human beings, even vegans, is a bad thing, m’kay?” Given how much fun they had over the previous 85 minutes, running in completely the opposite philosophical direction, I’m less than convinced. Humans are no different from other animals – certainly no better – seems to be closer to the real message. Not quite all the stabs hit home. However, it’s probably the blackest comedy I’ve seen since Four Lions, in terms of sheer willingness to seek humour in places you’d never expect to find it. If you feel that cannibalism is no laughing matter, this might change your mind.