Fear City: A Family-Style Comedy

During the Cannes Film Festival, Odile Deray is publicising a bad slasher called Red is Dead when real murders begin that copy the killings in the film. The victims are projectionists. She brings both her bodyguard Serge Karamazov and the film's star Simon Jérémi to the festival, and as the murders continue the publicity grows without her asking for it. Alain Berbérian directed. The screenplay and the leads belong to the comedy group Les Nuls: Alain Chabat, Dominique Farrugia and Chantal Lauby. The film parodies big-budget Hollywood productions, with Basic Instinct, Pretty Woman and The Terminator among its direct targets. The humour rests heavily on French wordplay, which makes it hard going for anyone who does not speak the language. The most cited section is a musical number: the Carioca dance the characters perform to entertain the festival crowd. It stayed at number one in France for two weeks and its lines settled into everyday French speech, quoted regularly in other productions. Who it is for: viewers who speak French and like nineties parody comedy. Who it is not for: anyone watching with subtitles. Most of the jokes do not translate and the film can look flat without them.