Review of Mammuth (2010) by Panta O — 04 Oct 2011

Directors Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine in this movie combined intense Frenchness with a kind of English comedy-sensibility the best possible way and they got weird movie which is fummy and sad! Gérard Depardieu was a real star even in very unusual scenes which Kervern and Delépine sometimes unexpectedly spring on the viewer, just to keep us all off balance (one of those scenes shows Depardieu engaging in the kind of activity with his cousin which is almost always reserved for teenagers in the movies)...

A fat, resentful and slow-witted man called Serge, riding a motorbike "Mammuth" is uncompromisingly unsympathetic. His wife is working in a supermarket (played by Yolande Moreau) and she, too, is massively unsympathetic. And two of them in a story when Serge retires from his job in a meat-packing plant - does not promise a lot... it'll be your mistake to assume that!

Serge must now tour around the country on his old motorbike, collecting the lost payslips and documents that prove his employment history and this is a chance for us to travel with him into his dodgy dark past haunted by the ghost of an old girlfriend, played by the beautiful Isabelle Adjani.

Enjoy this unexpected journey in full! I really did!