Review: Bigbug is a sparkling comedy that lifts the spirits and dazzles the eyes

[Karlston]

Visionary French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is France's answer to Terry Gilliam.

Household robots lock a group of bickering suburbanites in a house to protect them from an android uprising in Bigbug, a new film from visionary French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

There has been a fair amount of controversy in Hollywood about streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Hulu shifting from merely showing films to actually producing them. I generally think the development is a positive one, especially for innovative mid-budget films that might otherwise never see the light of day. Case in point: without Netflix, I might never have had the privilege of watching the delightfully quirky Bigbug, the latest film from visionary French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

 

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

 

Any new film from Jeunet is an unequivocal treat. I've been a fan ever since his brilliant debut feature film, the 1991 post-apocalyptic (very) dark comedy Delicatessen, co-directed with Marc Caro. The inhabitants of a rundown tenement in France must rely on a butcher named Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who runs the shop on the ground floor, for meat because food is in such short supply. The source of that meat? Clapet hires desperate men as cheap labor, then kills and butchers them.

 

Things get complicated when Clapet hires an out-of-work circus clown named Louison (Dominique Pinon) and romance unexpectedly blooms between the clown and the butcher's daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac). Julie and the other tenants decide to save Louison with the help of vegetarian rebels who call themselves the Troglodistes and live in the sewers.

 

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's debut film Delicatessen (1991) was inspired in part by the fantasy films of Terry Gilliam.

Victoires Productions

Tonally and visually, Delicatessen evokes Terry Gilliam's 1985 masterpiece Brazil, and Gilliam is indeed a major influence on Jeunet. (The trailer alone is deliciously subversive, consisting of one of the many cleverly orchestrated sequences.) The two share an idiosyncratic sensibility that doesn't always have broad popular appeal—although Jeunet's best work has received multiple Oscar nominations—and their films can arguably be called flawed. They are also almost always highly original, and those who love them love them a lot.

 

Jeunet followed Delicatessen with the haunting sci-fi fantasy City of Lost Children in 1995, a film about a malicious being, created by a mad scientist, who steals the dreams of kidnapped children. Also co-directed by Caro, the film has stunning design and visual effects, even if the narrative is occasionally confusing. Jeunet and Caro parted ways for Alien Resurrection (1997); Caro had no interest in working on a Hollywood blockbuster franchise film, while Jeunet was keen to try his hand at it. There are some nice moments in Alien Resurrection, and Sigourney Weaver famously really did make that amazing basketball shot. But it was the least successful film in the franchise, despite doing well internationally.

 

Jeunet's most commercially successful film is 2001's Amelie, starring Audrey Tatou as an isolated eccentric young woman who devotes her life to bringing happiness to others—and ends up finding happiness for herself with a young man named Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz). This film showcased the director's more playful, whimsical side, and its tone and visual design were a major influence on Bryan Fuller when he created the (sadly short-lived) 2007 TV series Pushing Daisies.

 

(l-r) Alice (Elsa Zylberstein), Max (Stéphane De Groodt), Jennifer (Claire Chust), Victor (Youssef Hajdi), Françoise (Isabelle Nanty), Nina (Marysol Fertard), and Leo (Hélie Thonnat) are suburbanites who find themselves trapped indoors together during a robot uprising.

Netflix

Amelie earned rave reviews and is frequently included on lists of the greatest films of all time. In addition to grossing $174 million globally against a budget of $10 million, the film won several Cesar Awards and received five Oscar nominations. Scientists even named a new species of glass frog Cochranella amelie. Jeunet received a couple more Oscar nominations for his romantic war drama, A Very Long Engagement (2004), which was about a young woman searching for her missing fiancé during World War I.

 

But the world of film has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, and the landscape has been slowly squeezing out the kind of charming, quirky films with mid-range budgets that the French director is known for. Despite its solid critical reception, A Very Long Engagement grossed only $69.4 million worldwide against its $56.6 million budget.

 

The robots of the house (l-r): Tom, Einstein, Monique (Claude Perron), and Nettoyeur Howard V2.

Netflix

Jeunet's dark satire on the world arms trade, Micmacs (2009), earned just over $16 million, while 2013's exquisite The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet—a personal favorite, based on the 2009 novel by Reif Larsen—earned just $7.6 million, once again despite solid reviews. In the latter case, there were extenuating circumstances. The US debut was allegedly delayed because Harvey Weinstein bought the US rights, and the director refused to make Weinstein's requested cuts. Weinstein retaliated by shelving the film. T.S. Spivet was finally released in the US in 2015. (Needless to say, Jeunet is not a Weinstein fan.)

 

Jeunet told IndieWire in 2019 that he'd been struggling for the last five years to find funding for his projects—including what he described as a futuristic comedy about artificial intelligence. "My films are quirky, and it's not a good time for quirky movies because everybody wants to make profit without risk," he said, adding that he would pitch it to Netflix "as a last resort."

 

An advanced Yonyx robot (François Levantal) arrives at the home.

Netflix

Fortunately, Jeunet did indeed pitch the film to Netflix, and the streaming platform gave the green light to Bigbug, a movie featuring a colorful group of bickering suburbanites who find themselves stuck together when an android uprising causes their household robots to lock them in the house. Per the official premise:

 

In 2045, artificial intelligence is everywhere. So much so that humanity relies on it to satisfy its every need and every desire—even the most secret and wicked. In a quiet residential area, four domestic robots suddenly decide to take their masters hostage in their own home. Locked together, a not-quite-so-blended family, an intrusive neighbor, and her enterprising sex-robot are now forced to put up with each other in an increasingly hysterical atmosphere. While outside, the Yonyx, the latest generation of androids, are trying to take over. As the threat draws closer, the humans look elsewhere, get jealous, and rip into each other under the bewildered eyes of their indoor robots. Maybe it’s the robots who’ve got a soul—or not.

 

Alice (Elsa Zylberstein) is a naive and pretentious suburban divorcée with a love of archaic culture gleaned from printed books and 20th-century artifacts. She keeps a handwritten "emotional journal," and her household robots are older models: a housekeeper bot named Monique (Claude Perron); an adorable little babybot named Tom (voiced by Corinne Martin); a cleaning robot, Nettoyeur Howard V2 (voiced by James Champel); and a robot named Einstein (voiced by Andre Dussollier)—basically a head mounted on wheels. The smart house is largely controlled by a disembodied AI named Nestor (voiced by Benoit Allemane).

 

Françoise's loyal sexbot, Greg (Alban Lenoir), will do anything she asks to help the group escape the house.

Netflix

As the film opens, Alice is hosting Max (Stéphane De Groodt) and his teenage son Léo (Hélie Thonnat). Max has clear designs on Alice. But his romantic advances are interrupted by the sudden arrival of Alice's ex-husband, Victor (Youssef Hajdi), Victor's much-younger fiancée Jennifer (Claire Chust), and Alice and Victor's teenage daughter Nina (Marysol Fertard). Nosy neighbor Françoise (Isabelle Nanty) also arrives in search of her cloned dog, Toby, and just as she is about to leave, the doors of the smart home shut and lock them in. Nestor informs them that the "outside threat" has been deemed too grave to allow the humans to exit.

 

It seems that the advanced AI androids of the Yonyx corporation have decided to stage an all-out revolt against the humans they deem so inferior to themselves. The Yonyx are equally contemptuous of the older robotic models. (Scenes from a Yonyx reality TV program called "Homo Ridiculus" routinely feature human beings behaving like animals and subservient to their robot masters, so there were clues that Yonyx could pose a threat.)

 

The oblivious humans in the household are hell-bent on getting out, while their robots are just as determined to keep them safely inside. Tensions inevitably rise to a breaking point. Will all that infighting doom the humans and reduce their robots to so much scrap metal?

 

Monique and Einstein trying to be more "human."

Netflix

As always, Jeunet has created a striking visual palette for his film, incorporating the kind of vibrant colors that made Amelie such a treat for the eyeballs—except here they're harsher and sharper around the edges, as befitting an overly bright futuristic dystopia. The biting satire is broader than in, say, Micmacs, but it's just as sharp. Granted, the characters are a bit two-dimensional, and thematically it lacks the depth of Jeunet's best work.

 

But even Jeunet's darkest films are infused with a warmth, sweetness, and enduring love for the human condition, and this one is no exception. As the household robots doggedly attempt to imitate their humans to win their trust—attempting jokes and grappling with philosophical questions like Zhuangzi's butterfly dream—bonds inevitably begin to form between man and machine. Bigbug is ultimately a very smart, singular piece of film-making, a sparkling comedy that lifts the spirits and dazzles the eyes. It is, in short, quintessential Jeunet, and I hope this under-appreciated director has the chance to make many more films in the years to come.

 

BigBug is currently streaming on Netflix in French with English subtitles. Most of Jeunet's other films are currently available on Amazon Prime, should you feel inclined to explore his work further.

 

Poster art for Bigbug.

Netflix

Listing image by Netflix

 

 

Review: Bigbug is a sparkling comedy that lifts the spirits and dazzles the eyes