La vis

This one is kind of hard to find, but worth seeking out. After seeing it years ago on a cable channel here in the USA, I spent a long time unsuccessfully trying to find an out of print French DVD collection of short films that contained it, and finally snagged a copy. It's very nice to see it again. It has a sort of retro look and surrealist atmosphere that admirers of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" will appreciate, and the made-up language spoken, besides resembling French and German, contains the odd English word or phrase tossed in at times. It's an outstanding little film with great style and imagination. It probably wouldn't have wide appeal, but it's a tasty tidbit for a film connoisseur.

You can always find the movie via the following link http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2t3jc_la-vis-12_shortfilms. This is part 1 and the second part follows. It is really extraordinary! The artificial language is imho a mixture of many European languages including Russian, Romanian, Polish, French, English, German and more. Nevertheless it is not difficult to understand ... Jean Reno is incredible - especially in his second role! Metallica deserves absolute mark for being really "kafkish" (it reminds me scenes from Kafka directed by Steven Soderbergh). I wonder what the movie budget was, it seems to me rather costly to build up such complex stage. Does anyone know another movie of this kind maybe by the same team of creators? I wish to see more of this kind - it is not so absurd as Svankmajer is and the final impression is remarkable

This short movie is a jewel! It brings us in a very strange world which is not very understandable but which is finally quite close to our world of incomprehension. For that Didier Flamand used a weird language, showing (like Tati already did a long time ago) that people don't understand each other even with the same language. And the weakness of languages is well shown here!

Flamand created a new language by mixing French words and foreign tones that mostly sound German. German? Hem…It's quite ironic when you see the "Hitler-like" mustache of Jean Reno in the movie! And this leads us to think about Chaplin's "Great Dictator". "la Vis" is really influenced by Chaplin or Buster Keaton because of the beautiful black and white shots, the "mute" sense of humor, the old captions at the beginning, the way Reno acts and the production design which reminds Chaplin's `Modern Times'.

Thus the mixed influence of Chaplin and Tati works very well, and the special atmosphere can also remind Jeunet and Caro's "Delicatessen" mostly for the craziness of the characters. The actors are perfect, especially the magistral Jean Reno, and they should deserve a standing ovation because of the difficulty of their roles. Therefore it's an amazing mad movie… and the end is splendidly burlesque! 10/10 and the movie really deserved all the prizes it won everywhere in the world.