SURREAL SINGING: Emmenez-moi
by MALCOLM FRASER
There seems to be a mini-trend in contemporary French cinema of films about iconic Gallic singers and their obsessed fans. First came Jean-Philippe with Johnny Hallyday, and now Emmenez-moi, Edmond Bensimon’s conceptual comedy revolving around a Charles Aznavour fixation.
Jean-Claude (Gérard Darmon) a middle-aged, alcoholic Aznavour freak, decides one fine day to make a pilgrimage from small-town Roubaix to Paris to meet his idol. His plan is to do the whole trip on foot, accompanied by his teenage nephew Benoît (Damien Jouillerot). The unimpressed youth gets dragged along, alleviating his boredom by filming the whole thing on video.
The film, in fact, takes place almost entirely within the frame of Benoît’s handicam. This device, coupled with Darmon’s obnoxious demeanour—he’s loud, belligerent and prone to smacking his hapless videographer upside the head—at first indicates that this film might be a hard slog, a Bukowski-esque journey to the depths captured in amateurish home-movie style.
Soon, though, things pick up as the duo encounter two recruits to their quest: Arsène (Lucien Jean-Baptiste), an Antillean sad-sack who fled his homeland after a family scandal and dreams of returning, and Boris (Zinedine Soualem), a dim-bulb garbage man who becomes enthralled with Darmon after hearing one of his impromptu Aznavour performances.
That’s the other thing: Darmon regularly breaks into song throughout the movie, and during these scenes, the cinematic style abruptly switches to that of a classic musical, with sweeping cameras, bright colours and Darmon hamming it up to the hilt. With these surreal interludes, and the comic relief of the supporting characters, the film takes on the tone of a road-movie comedy with strong echoes of both The Wizard of Oz and Waiting for Godot.
Darmon deserves credit for somehow making it believable that this unlikeable bozo could convince anyone to join in his quest by sheer force of his personality. The purpose of the home-movie concept is a bit nebulous, but all in all it adds to the charm of this oddball little film. Aznavour fans take note: though the crooner is billed second to Darmon, he only appears in a tiny cameo at the end, though his songs are showcased to great effect throughout.
Emmenez-moi opens this
Friday, Feb. 2
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