Despite Virginie Efira’s best efforts, this inane comedy from director Albert Dupontel is destined to be forgotten.
Back in March, after a year in which only a few months of cinemagoing was permitted due to the pandemic, France’s national film awards – the Césars – saw Albert Dupontel’s Bye Bye Morons claim seven victories from its 13 nominations. However, this is not necessarily a marker of overall quality. With Dupontel taking on directing, screenwriting and lead acting duties, Bye Bye Morons attempts to join the ranks of classic French absurdist comedies – but misses a step and instead falls on its face, using farcical slapstick throughout in place of genuine humour.
The film opens with two independent character threads that converge by chance, rendering them permanently interwoven in a sort of comedy of errors. These characters are Suze Trappet (Virginie Efira), a middle-aged woman issued with a death sentence after finding out she has an incredibly rare and incurable immune disease, and Jean-Baptiste Cuchas (Albert Dupontel), technological savant and director of surveillance and security in some unspecified governmental institution in Limoges.
After learning of her fate, Suze decides to seek out the child she was forced to put up for adoption following her unplanned teenage pregnancy, and when Jean-Baptiste is fired from the very building where the family archives are stored, their paths cross and chaos ensues. Jean-Baptiste’s earlier failed suicide attempt made it seem as though he was opening fire on his colleagues, and when Suze finds a way to blackmail Jean-Baptiste through her possession of the evidence needed to acquit him, they become partners in crime on the journey to find Suze’s son before she dies.
If the basic premise sounds ripe for comedic potential, the morally-dubious script doesn’t do the idea justice. Much of the intended comedy stems from the aforementioned notion of self-harm, specifically scenes featuring the repeated injury of Monsieur Blin (Nicholas Marié), a blind archivist who becomes a vital member of Jean-Baptiste and Suze’s mission.
The exception to the mediocrity of Bye Bye Morons is Virginie Efira. Although having established herself in Justine Triet’s Sibyl and Catherine Corsini’s An Impossible Love, her presence here seems like a downgrade. And yet, the constraints of the material do not succeed in holding her back, Efira somehow managing to deliver a genuine performance. Bye Bye Morons ultimately tries so hard to be its own thing that it ends up relegating itself to the scrapheap of C-grade comedies with predictable outcomes and a poorly thought-out undercurrent of romance.
Published 23 Jul 2021
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