Three to see at LFF 2014 if you like ... comedies

True Detective headed up by Inspector Clouseau? This we need to see. Programme advisor Leigh Singer picks out three comic delights from this year’s London Film Festival, including a new film by an established director, a breakthrough film, and a wild card to take a chance on.

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The new film from an established director …

Li’l Quinquin (P’tit Quinquin)

Lil Quinquin (2014)

Lil Quinquin (2014)

What’s it about?

In a small village in northern France, a dismembered body – minus the head – is found stuffed inside a dead cow in a disused Second World War bunker. Investigations by a bumbling local policeman gradually reveal a series of bizarre, gruesome murders and an eccentric rural community, as the local kids led by mischievous wild child Li’l Quinquin, look on. Mixing absurdist farce with a slowburn creep of genuine malevolence, this is the new comedy from… 

Who made it?

… Bruno Dumont? The master of harrowing dramas L’Humanité (1999), Flanders (2006) and Hors Satan (2011), films that unflinchingly lay bare the darkest corners of body and soul, has a film in our Laugh strand? Well, technically, Li’l Quinquin is a four-part French TV mini-series, shot in lavish widescreen and here screened as a single entity.

Though the tonal shift is looser and more accessible than anything in his filmography, there’s no doubt this is Dumont’s world: from the familiar milieu of his Calais region’s rugged countryside and use of unconventional, often physically or mentally disabled non-professionals in leading roles, through to the pitiless examination of the nature of evil.

What’s special about it?

Dumont puts the slap in slapstick, mining genuine laugh-out-loud moments – like the appearance of the ski-mask-wearing probable killer, unremarked amid a funeral crowd – with a bracing look at how incestuous village life breeds petty, even homicidal, cruelties. The matter-of-factness about the increasingly outré events only adds to their cumulative power.

And as ever, Dumont has somehow unearthed an incredible cast of characters: the piercing eyes of cleft-lipped Alane Delhaye as the watchful Quinquin; and the extraordinary facial tics of Bernard Pruvost’s Captain Van der Weyden, whose perpetual-motion eyebrows deserve a best supporting actor award all of their own.

Imagine True Detective headed up by Inspector Clouseau, investigating the cast of Harmony Korine’s Gummo (1996) and you’ll have some idea of Li’l Quinquin’s world. True Detective’s Rust Cohle famously philosophised that “Time is a flat circle.” That Dumont says much the same about Hell, yet delivers us from – or even to – it, with such comedic flair is truly worth seeing.

The breakthrough …

Zero Motivation

Zero Motivation (2014)

Zero Motivation (2014)

What’s it about?

Three linked stories about a group of female Israeli army conscripts stuck in an isolated office outpost. Daffi is desperate to escape back to Tel Aviv and civilisation; Zohar, addicted to the computer game Minesweeper, grapples with her own sexuality; and fearsome station commander Rama struggles to keep them and all the other women in line, even though the only weapons wielded are staple guns.

We follow them and their colleagues through the interminable, bureaucratic no-man’s-land of an army destined never to fight (stationary amid the stationery, as it were); searching for their own individual identities in an environment that, even though predominantly populated by women, still feels defined by patriarchal privilege.

Who made it?

This is the debut feature of Israeli writer-director Talya Lavie, whose short films were multiple award-winners at international film festivals including the Berlinale. Zero Motivation is picking up where those shorts left off, having already taken the prizes for best narrative feature, and Lavie herself for the Nora Ephron Prize, at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Lavie not only drew on her own experiences as a jobnikiot (Israeli slang for soldiers who don’t see combat) but also toured numerous army bases and interviewed the women there about the experiences of their mandatory service. As such it’s a highly culturally specific story, imbued with the professional and emotional frustrations that resonate across national borders.

What’s special about it?

There are many worthy Israeli films, from Beaufort (2007) to Waltz with Bashir (2008), which deal directly with controversial political and military storylines. Zero Motivation’s gambit is to take the army setting and employ it to its own distinct ends – gender politics and warfare on the home front. One can throw several inspirations into the pot – Private Benjamin’s all-female trainees, Jarhead’s existential limbo, The Office’s mind-numbing workload – and still not pinpoint Lavie’s potent tragicomic blend.

She moves from scenes of screwball delight to some very dark territory of full-scale emotional breakdown and it’s testament to the excellence of her ensemble cast that the shifting of gears seems so effortless. To find a fresh, insightful story, set in a region so long embroiled in such bitter conflict, is no small feat, yet Lavie pulls it off with the precision of a seasoned veteran. Mission accomplished.

The wild card …

The Mule

The Mule (2014)

The Mule (2014)

What’s it about?

Dim bulb and first-time drug mule Ray Jenkins agrees to swallow heroin pellets and smuggle them back from Thailand, only to get caught at Aussie customs. Local police can hold him for up to a week, hoping that nature will take its course and that the evidence will come to light. But while Ray sits tight, the ruthless gangsters who sent him, not to mention a corrupt cop, close in and they’re a darn sight more irritable than any bowel syndrome from which poor Ray might be suffering.

Who made it?

Inspired by a real news story, screenwriter Jaime Brown penned an elaborated screenplay, itself then rewritten by actors Angus Sampson and Saw (2004) scribe Leigh Whannell, who play the hapless Ray and his treacherous buddy Gavin. Sampson also co-directs alongside commercials veteran Tony Mahony and the whole deal was enticing enough to attract some of Australia’s finest thesps, notably Lord of the Rings alumni Hugo Weaving and John Noble, as tough cop and vicious mob boss respectively.

What’s special about it?

There’s no getting away from it: The Mule revolves around whether a man will go to the loo or not. And yes, a certain bodily substance does indeed, as the phrase goes, happen. However, anyone dismissing this as low-brow, gross-out number twos is missing out on a real find – a film that’s both a relentless, oftentimes brutal exercise in suspense that could easily hold its own in the Thrill section; and a go-for-broke comedy that can make you gag with its daring black humour or super-smart plot twists.

At its heart is Sampson, whose portrayal of a man trying to keep it all in is so convincing that you physically squirm, while Weaving, Noble and Whannell offer top-notch support. Go take a chance on this diamond in the roughage – although maybe hold off on the popcorn.

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