99 FRANCS (2007)

 

Directed By: Jan Kounen Written By: Jan Kounen, Bruno Lavaine & Nicolas Charlet Based On the book by Frederic Beigbeder Cinematography: David Ungaro Editor: Anny Danche

Cast: Jean Dujardin, Vahina Giocante, Jocelyn Quivrin, Patrick Mille, Elisa Tovati, Nicolas Marie, Dominique Bettenfeld

The life of Octave Parango, a flamboyant ad designer, is filled with success, satire, misery, and love.

I will admit I hated this film for the first half hour and then slowly learned to go with its Rhythms. Still don’t really like the film but appreciate what was intended and tried 

A dark comedic satire that tries to send up advertisement agencies and seeks to have sex and drugs on the brain most of the time. As the debauchery never seems as happy as it should and half the time passes for entertainment here. The film comes across as stylish but as a fad. Definitely a disposable product of it’s time. 

This feels like a film where the details feel like add on’s. As the film aspires at first to be so smooth.

Leaving it hard to care for not only the lead characters but most of them. Sure living a life most might want but still despicable and empty. 

The film ends up feeling too slick for its own good. As it comes off pretentious and empty though purports to be about something in the end, a kind of redemption of a character who doesn’t seem worth it and only does it out of revenge.

The two female characters in the movie are the only ones we care about for many reasons. One they are fetishized throughout and presented mroe as sexual objects. Who has no false airs about them, but we end up caring about them. Throughout no matter what they keep it real. 

Their characters are important. As they are barely on screen and used more for erotic scenes then any other. Yet their presence can be felt when they are not on screen after their introductions. 

They are one of the few times the film becomes of interest. 

The film has the writer of the novel that it is based on appearing in trippy scenes as the mirror version of the main character as an inside joke. 

Which makes sense as this seems like a project that was green lit and rushed into production upon a popular best-seller at the time in France. 

The film seems to occasionally try to redeem itself while occasionally being interesting due to the practical visual effects. 

As the film is a tragedy where like all advertising tries to show and distract like it’s all good and then you truly find out what has been behind it all. What it was afraid to tell and show. Where it tries to show depth and where a reckless life of excess Can lead to unlike most films that see characters screw up and be likeable. Then end up paying little penance yet stay the same only now paid for their crimes… Almost instead it offers many fake-out endings that feel cruel and mean-spirited also like the film has tried to point out and manipulate the whole time. As that is what it was made for.  

Though it does have a revenge comeuppance for who the film sees as even worse and makes sure we do too. 

The whole point of this film seems to be exposing the business and going back to basics, but even that offers a twist. That would go along with Miserables, overwrought cinema seeking to be daring.

The film offers plenty of natural beauty in the end compared to all the ugliness we have seen throughout. 

It seems to end with a choose your own adventure ambiguous ending. That lets You decide but acknowledges itself as a product. 

Grade: C