Louise-Michel review

"Let's off the boss!"

Louise-Michel is a try-hard, darker than black comedy tribute to anarchy and at its core honours the real life anarchist of the same name, but seems to have confused intentions and mistakes the concept of anarchy with chaos.

The plot is a mess, as two very awful characters, Louise and Michel respectively, bumble through the movie with the goal to kill whomever is responsible for closing down the plant at which Louise worked at. This is achieved in the end as Louise hires Michel the worst hit man ever conceived to perform the kill by using the collective lay-off money all the factory workers received.

Louise is rude and illiterate and in an ironic twist ends up killing more people than Michel. Michel is a coward despite his profession, this is proven by his refusal to even kill a noisy dog and one wonders if he has ever killed a human being. Disregarding the cowardice nature he is very unscrupulous and somehow manipulates those around him. Both characters are ultimately idiots, and this is further realised when their back stories are slowly revealed, which do nothing to add to the plot or character development.

The film is not homage to anarchy although there are some themes that could suggest this,it is simply not the case. Both characters in their respective pasts went through sex changes suggesting an almost deep philosophical stance of the anarchy of humanity itself. Let's not kid ourselves however, this film is 90% chaos/silliness and 10% anarchy at best. The chaos is at times side-splittingly hilarious however, such as the shameless killing methods that left me wide eyed and gawping. These methods involved hiring the terminally ill to perform the kills. Easily the funniest scene which brought tears to my eyes was the one involving a bizarre old dying man in a wheelchair that Michel hired, sitting outside an office building taking pot shots at random office workers believing them to be targets as he shouts "time to croak you bastard!" before missing entirely with his shotgun, the recoil sends him into incoming traffic.

Some more chaos involved Michel's neighbour a conspiracy theory nutcase and basically every supporting character which all have deep rooted issues, and add to the mean spiritedness of the film.

This movie left me shocked, but ultimately not satisfied. Disregarding the moments of hilarious randomness that played out, the rest of the film fell flat, was very unfunny and cruel in its essence. The ending only further justified the puzzling nature of the films intentions.

 

5/10