Unexpected delight of Micmacs

Did you see the fantastical French film on Film4 last night? 

Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot) from 2009 was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the same person who directed Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. This one one didn't have Audrey Tautou but does have the same quirky humour and inventiveness especially in the design and construction of the scavengers cave-like home. I loved the mechanical people that the artist Tiny Pete (Michel Crémadès) fashioned out of scavenged stuff and which were actually created by sculptor Gibert Peyre. The plot is suitably silly with Bazil (Dany Boon) and his new found friends striving to bring down two competing arms dealers, one of whom manufactured the landmine that killed his father and the other whose bullet nearly killed Bazil himself. The cast are all great especially Dominique Pinon as Buster the human cannonball, Julie Ferrier as Elastic Girl the contortionist and Omar Sy, who I recently saw in Untouchable, as Remington the former ethnographer.

I highly recommend Micmacs and, at the time of writing, the DVD is only £4 with free shipping from Amazon!