Case départ

Roberto Benigni's La Vitta e Bella tried to bring comedy into a concentration camp. Some have loved the result, but many have complained that the camp didn't look as hard as it really was, or that it was too easy to depict the nicest Jews against the evil Nazis.

Case Départ avoids both of these problems: the two heroes are both horrible, horrible persons, and their exposition scenes are small masterpiece in dark humor. And then, when, through the spell of a witch, they go back to 1780 at the time of slavery, the scenes are really painful to watch. You got the chains, the whip... They hardly toned it down to keep it funny.

You gotta hand it to the writers, who managed to make a comedy about slavery, when few things are less funny. But the movie also has quite a social statement to make, and makes it smartly as well as funnily. By having the two main characters representing one extreme of being Black in France (one is an "Oreo", the other a never-do-good who blames Whites first)... as you can guess, by the end of their journey, they will both have learned something important about their identity.

I recommend this film wholeheartedly.