André is an Idiot: Death is the punchline in this poignant end of life diary

André is an Idiot is one of the most enjoyable films this reviewer has ever had the pleasure of watching – an odd verdict, you might think, for a documentary about a happily married man in his fifties diagnosed with terminal cancer. But Tony Benna’s documentary, which won the Audience Award winner at last year’s Sundance, is tragic, poignant and hilarious all at once. 

The title is borrowed from André’s mother who, when told about his doom-laden diagnosis, responds “What a fucking idiot!”. Or so André says – but we’ve already learnt that, in a contest between the strict truth and a self-deprecating joke, for him the truth will always lose out. At the start of his narration, André recounts how, when 13 years old and staying with his grandmother, an ill-advised masturbatory session left him with wood-splinters in his penis. 

His marriage was initially motivated by his Canadian-born wife Janice’s need for a green card, and they agreed that sex wouldn’t be involved – both were already dating other people. The two were invited on to the TV show The Newlywed Game, where they won the prize of a trip to Anguilla. While there André called his brother Nick to tell him, “I have a problem – I fucked my wife!”. 

And so it goes. Some 15 minutes in, we come to the diagnosis – Stage 4 colon cancer which has already reached his liver. Caught in its early stages, it’s one of the easiest cancers to cure; and ten years earlier, André’s best friend Lee had urged him to have a colonoscopy. But André, mistrustful of doctors, had refused – hence the ‘idiocy’.  

Partly, we realise, this tone is motivated by André’s determination to shield his teenage daughters Tallula and Delilah from the worst implications of what’s happening. But it’s also sustained by his determined irreverence, backed up by writer and first-time director Benna, who intersperses André’s laughing in the face of death with well-chosen comic stop-motion animations created by the aptly-named production company Flesh and Bones, which Benna co-founded. 

The film continues in a jokey and self-mocking mode until close to the end, when things become more introspective; Janice can no longer conceal the sadness in her face, while the emotion breaks through André’s voice as we see his limbs turn skeletal in contrast with his unhealthily swollen stomach. But even as the darkness descends, he tells us in his final journal entry: “My fear is insignificant compared to the love all around me. I thought I needed suffering, but instead I get bliss.” 

► André is an Idiot is in UK cinemas now.