The French Guy

Undoubtedly one of the worst films to play at this year’s festival, The French Guy is a tedious, interminable, and flat-out awful black comedy that strikes all the wrong notes right from the get-go (the movie opens with an extreme close-up of a wound being stitched, if that’s any indication). Elizabeth (Babz Chula) has just undergone brain surgery to remove some kind of cancerous growth, and though she’s convinced that she needs more time in the hospital, she finds herself discharged mere hours after the anesthesia has worn off. It becomes clear almost immediately that something’s gone terribly wrong – as Elizabeth finds herself suffering from uncontrollable bursts of murderous rage every time she sneezes. The French Guy‘s been written and directed by Ann Marie Fleming, who is clearly going for an absurd, off-the-wall, this-could-never-happen-anytime-anywhere sort of vibe; on that level, she certainly succeeds. But the problem is that Fleming clearly intends for the majority of this to come off as funny and clever, two adjectives which absolutely do not apply to even a split-second of The French Guy. The film’s many problems are exacerbated by Chula’s irritating, unreasonably over-the-top performance; the actress doesn’t chew the scenery so much as she devours it. Add to that a pointless subplot involving a stereotypical French character (he even wears a beret!) and a truly disgusting tongue-dismemberment sequence that seems as though it’d be more at home in a Takashi Miike flick, and you’ve got a recipe for a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

no stars out of ****