In Howard Hawks’ uproarious
screwball comedy classic Bringing Up Baby a shrewd but wildly impetuous
young woman (Katharine Hepburn) ambushes a stodgy, prematurely middle aged
dinosaur scientist (Cary Grant) and drives him so far out of his comfort zone
that in the movie’s penultimate moment the poor bugger greets his perspective mother-in-law
in drag with the exclamation, “I’ve just gone gay!”
In director/co-writer Michel Leclerc’s
at times equally enchanting modern screwball like political farce, The Names
of Love, an equally impetuous young French woman (of Algerian decent)
corners a stodgy middle aged animal doctor who performs autopsies on dead ducks
(he calls them mallards) to detect the onset of bird flu.
Arthur Martin – just one of 15,207
persons in France with that name – meet Baya Benmahmoud (“No one in France has
that name.”). These two completely incompatible types – who would flunk every
computer dating match – meet through the fickle fate of a TV call-in show. He’s
the slightly pompous expert who only manages to make everybody feel more
paranoid about a revenge of nature problem that is a long shot at best; she’s
the helplessly inept apprentice talk show phone screener who after dismissing
the callers as “jerks,” invades the studio to confront the expert in the middle
of his drone.
“But we mustn’t minimize the
risks.”
“Stop bugging us with your fucking
duck! You’re driving us crazy! We don’t care about bird flu. Give it a rest!”
“Dear listeners, someone has just
burst into the studio.”
“Studies show we need to remain
vigilant.”
“I don’t want to be. You people
make everyone fascist! If it’s not oysters, it’s cows! Then, what? Immigrants,
right? You don’t realize what you’re doing. If you don’t trust ducks, that’s a
bad sign!”
The key word in this nutty exchange
is fascist. Baya – daughter to an unbridled picket sign wielding mom and a
retiring Algerian born handyman who once harbored artistic ambitions -- sees
fascists in virtually every bed into which she hops in serial abandon.
Proclaiming her aim to change her enemies’ politics in the act of sex, Baya has
never before encountered a guy like Arthur Marin. Arthur feels he’s like the
members of a South Korean soccer team who all bore the last name Kim. When
Arthur actually tries to copulate with Baya she keeps moving the goal post
forward – he finds himself as a kind platonic partner, witness to Baya’s marathon
effort to bed every politically incorrect oaf in Metropolitan Paris.
The humor is both physically broad
– a delicious sequence involves Baya wandering out nonchalantly in the buff, in
the process gravely offending a staid Muslim man on the subway – and
politically intricate. Part of your enjoyment will rest on how up you are on
the ever changing French debate on women in Muslim head garb, the hideous
history of WWII Vichy France and the Holocaust, as well as the hidden landmines
concerning one’s immigrant status and where it places you on the scale between Gaulist,
Socialist and, yes, fascist.
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Sara Forestier imbues Baya with a
cheeky self-assurance that in America is generally confined to the genre of
mean girl Jane Austen spoofs. Her farcical acting out of the sleeping with the
enemy saga is cushioned in a good natured zaniness that makes the term
“political whore” as innocuous as if it were being essayed by a Doris Day like
professional virgin; while Jacques Pariente’s beaten down sad sack Arthur
defangs any dirty old man twist to this inter-generational pillow talk. Some
wonderfully droll moments have Arthur in bittersweet exchanges with his teen
age self: the lonely boy who felt embarrassed to seem to profit from his
relatives concentration camp history by admitting to his snobby classmates that
his nerdy identity conceals the soul of a victim.
The moments that translate best –
the ones that possess a kind of Woody Allen neurotic Jewish family zaniness –
are where Baya and Martin attempt to dine with their respective parental units.
Arthur sternly warns the loose lipped Maya about the topics that are definitely
taboo when it comes to his nuclear power plant supervisor dad.
“Global warming?”
“Global warming equals oil equals
nuclear power. Don’t mention that to my father, you’ll only annoy him.”
“Well, what’s left? Traffic jams?”
“Are you kidding? Traffic jams
equal taxis equal Grandpa equals Auschwitz. I don’t want you mentioning the
subject.”
“So we can’t talk about anything
with them?”
“Exactly -- it took years for me to
find ways to talk about nothing.”
This artfully subversive French
comedy nimbly crosses through the nation’s political/cultural landmines
climaxing in a silly cameo by a real life French politician who in American
terms registers like the ghost of Al Gore.