THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
With its cliffside roads and sandstone spurs, Finistère has often served as the setting for film noir. In this rough and cutting landscape, an unfortunate accident quickly happened. Motorists are never safe from a steep fall against the rock. Shattered bodywork beaten by gigantic waves that leave little chance of escape. Knowing his classics – the dizzying roads seen with Claude Chabrol – Jonathan Barré, from the small port of Douarnenez, filmed the aptly named Good behavior, his third film with the comedy duo the Palmashow.
Welcome to a road safety center for people caught on speed cameras who don’t wear their seat belts. Pauline (Laure Calamy, newcomer to the group of boys) leads a course to recover license points. Conscientious, she makes no difference between the owners of Aston Martin and the drivers of Renault Clio, the eternal heads in the air and the people soaked in alcohol. But, when the evening comes, she improvises herself as a vigilante to avenge the memory of her companion, killed on the road. She takes her car, puts on a woolen hood with two holes for her eyes and turns into a “serial killer” of speeders deemed irrecoverable.
What looks like a revenge movie doubled as a parody of a superheroine film turns out to be a detective comedy. Captain Giordano (Grégoire Ludig), freshly arrived from his native South, and his hierarchical superior (David Marsais), who believes he knows everything about the region, embark on the trail of fatal collisions. This star duo shines with a sense of fallible observation and pataphysical reasoning.
On the principle of Columbus, the viewer knows the culprit and her way of constructing her crimes. The question is how the Miami Vice of Finistère will succeed in unmasking it. But, unlike the American series, all the salt of the film lies in the trampling of the investigation. More precisely, it is backing up. It takes Jonathan Barré an unfailing rigor to stage the two policemen in such a way that they absolutely miss all the clues that the public sees. There is a taste for regressive details, such as the dozens of photographs of Pauline’s companion pasted all over her house like souvenir magnets.
Procrastination Escape
These happy moments of comedy are reminiscent of the schoolboy humor that made the Palmashow famous on the Internet. The duo have a reference in common from the benches of the school: Wayne’s World, with Mike Myers, two somewhat teenage guys who were doing a TV show in their basement. Oscillating between the series B and the hoax, the film invites many cinephilic references to the Breton departmental roads. In a register close to Quentin Dupieux, we find The birds of Hitchcock, Usual Suspects by Bryan Singer Seven by David Fincher… Even the dog Buktus pays homage to the bullmastiff of Rocky.
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