Dedicated to Terry Jones, BYE BYE MORONS has another tangible link – or is that a wink – to Monty Python by way of a cameo by Terry Gilliam as a critter killin’ gun salesman.
Admiration and inspiration notwithstanding, BYE BYE MORONS, written and directed by Albert Dupontel, is a crazy, absurd, screwball, cracker barrel comedy about a terminally ill hairdresser, a suicidal civil servant and a blind archivist who band together in a dying wish quest that’s quirky, kooky and altogether quackers.
Deliriously daffy, poignant to a P, and zany as polka dotted zebra, BYE BYE MORONS is ‘Brazil’ bit by ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and probably makes the Cohen Brothers wish they’d conceived it.
Conception is at the core of BYE BYE MORONS, as fifteen year old Suze was forced to give up her baby for adoption. Now twenty-eight years later, the hair dresser has been diagnosed with a deadly cancer caused by chemicals used in her workplace. Her bucket list is succinct. To track her adopted son and see him at last before she shuffles of her mortal curl.
In farcical episodes that need to be seen to be believed, she collects a cohort of collaborators, a duo of damaged blokes who aid and abet her adventure, capering through her crusade trailing chaos, conflict and uproarious assembly.
Dupontel directed the gorgeous ‘See You Up There’ a few years ago, and doesn’t disappoint with his audacious telling of this curious tale. He also stars as M. Cuchas, the put upon public servant passed over for promotion by duplicitous politicians and pursued by the police for a perceived murder attempt.
Virginie Efira plays the terminally ill Suze with an effervescence that belies her character’s diagnosis and shows the determination and pluck of a woman who refuses to be robbed of her last ditch at happiness.
Nicolas Marie is blatantly batty as the blind archivist with a justified phobia of the police.
Farcical and fulsome, BYE BYE MORONS was a hilarious highlight of this year’s Alliance Française French Film Festival.
This wonderful film is available for viewing online with the Curzon Home Cinema streaming service: