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There's nothing worse than that Monday morning feeling. Just ask French factory worker Vincent (Bidou). He's so fed up with his life in the wet, grey countryside that he decides to ditch his daily routine of working and smoking to find some adventure.
Leaving his long-suffering wife and children without saying a word, Vincent escapes to Venice for a series of surreal encounters with transvestite cloakroom assistants, naked nuns, and egotistical piano players.
Recent French cinema has been particularly obsessed with stories about work and the workplace, with "Night Shift", "The Closet" and "Read My Lips" all focusing on the highs and lows of employment.
In Otar Ioseliani's near-silent farce, it's the monotony of working life that's the subject of much of the comedy, as Vincent's hopes and dreams of being a painter take second place to the necessity of providing for his precocious family.
Following in the footsteps of Jacques Tati, Ioseliani's humour relies on actions rather than words. It's a bizarre, near-silent world, full of eccentric characters and surreal moments. But the cumulative effect of this collection of strange encounters is rather like hearing numerous punchlines without ever being told a joke.
Blurring the line between being a film about monotony and being simply monotonous, this distinctly unfunny comedy is a quirky oddity that's more likely to frustrate than amuse.
Underneath the frivolous plot there's a story about slaying one's metaphorical dragons (one of the funniest sequences involves a crocodile that slithers about on the loose just in time for Vincent's son to use it as part of a St. George and the dragon photo-shoot) - but after two hours of this languorous farce, most viewers will wish Ioseliani had kept such ponderous ideas to himself.
In French with English subtitles
