99 FRANCS

OK, time to own up. I don’t always watch films the week I put them on the blog – occasionally I do “retrospectives” of ones I have watched. Come on, have hearts, I have a pretty good memory and don’t always watch three good films a week! Well, I was trawling through my archive at work today – I had a couple of hours free and decided to dedicate it to a few retrospectives – when I came across this film. Dear Lord, this film is so good I am kicking myself for not starting with it… I watched it three times AND volunteered to watch it at work. I don’t care if it’s French. I don’t care if it’s “experimental” – whatever that may mean – People, this is life-changing stuff, my sincerest apologies for forgetting it in the first place…

OK, so meet Octave Parango. Creative director and advertiser extraordinaire. He lives an INCREDIBLY fast life, fast women, the latest drugs A LOT of money. He is, in short, happy. Or does a VERY good impression of pretending he is. Then, quite unexpectedly he falls in love. For real. And as if that was not enough of a shock, the relationship fails, big time. Octave is still reeling from the pain, but life goes on and so do meetings with major clients… In one such meeting, Octave decides he has had enough. Enough of the consumerist, sham world of advertising, enough of the system that harbors it and people like him… This is war in all its horror. Octave style.

Now, for the older generation, the style of this film may jar… The editing is mind numbingly quick in places – a style the younger generation is used to from video clips. The style is very VERY hard hitting and has major shock value; think on a parr with Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick. But this style is SO well suited to the film because it matches the fast paced consumer society we live in, and we are after all so immune to EVERYTHING attached to this society that any criticism that is to be taken seriously MUST be shocking. And it is not just a dry criticism or elegy to the death of originality and times gone by. It gives a clear mind-numbing picture of the world of Advertising, the way they operate and the way we the consumers let ourselves get “had”. It’s one Hell of an angry film…

The film is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Frederic Beigbeder – and quite honestly, I am quite curious to read the book as well. And don’t let anything I’ve said put you off in any way, it’s a very honest and open account of things we all think, feel and would like to do in our heads. You will never watch advertisements in the same way again…