Crappy film

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I always tried to find and watch revolutionary films, fresh and absolutely original. Which is very hard to find. But not impossible. Who seeks finds! And I found this Themroc (1973), directed by Claude Faraldo. A true challenge to make a feature film without any bit of dialogue, only moans, howls, whimpers and a lot of belching, roar and shouting. Michel Piccoli, who is an excellent actor, is the perfect choice for the character that gives the title of the film. That same year, 1973, Piccoli played himself in Marco Ferreri's masterpiece, La Grande Bouffe. Both characters have something in common, that unique and complete naturalness of the actor. All the other actors (including Miou-Miou, Coluche) are very good, specially in the way they express themselves in sulking French. It is still a movie for a certain category of viewers, those incorrigible fools or refined connoisseurs.

This is mainly noted for having no intelligible dialogue throughout: given its considerable length (105 minutes) and essential plotlessness, though, the series of grunts, growls, groans and other gibberish uttered by all the characters involved does become wearying after a while. Nevertheless, it's a good example of the risks that film-makers were willing to take (and generally manage to pull off) during this most creative era in World Cinema; curiously enough, for being virtually a Silent film with barely established characters, this has one of the longest cast lists I've ever seen! THEMROC revolves around a laborer (Michel Piccoli) who goes berserk after getting the sack from work: he sleeps with his sister and destroys his apartment and, after the initial astonishment, his neighbors get the same anarchic bug. This streak of non-conformism also extends to sex (with plenty of non-graphic nudity on display), as Piccoli contrives to elicit uninhibited behavior from many of the females (be they nubile or frustrated) around him – including the secretary, Marilu' Tolo, he had been caught unwittingly peeping on and subsequently seduced. Despite the occasional brutality, police intervention in the matter largely proves ineffectual. Though the point of it all is obscure – unless it's that one needs to revert to some form of primeval state in order to survive the exigencies of the modern world – a handful of situations which crop up are definitely amusing: Piccoli and policeman Patrick Dewaere engaging in a tit-for-tat routine while the latter is rebuilding the façade of his apartment; feeling liberated, a victimized wife tries to assert herself and finally escapes her husband's tyranny through the window when he's not looking; a man spends practically the entire film lovingly washing his car but, then, at the very end he joins in the chaos by nonchalantly taking a sledge-hammer to it. Still, when all is said and done, the best thing about the film is its extraordinary fragmented editing.

It was truly amazing/amusing to read some of the pretentious, wanna-be pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook some people wrote about "Themroc". Clearly, this story excited quite a few of society's misfits, losers, and Marxist misanthropes because of its anarchistic attitude. They identify with the main character because, just like him, they are too weak to take the pressure of modern life so they seek out Che Guevara, Sid Vicious, or even G.G. Allin as guiding lights, mocking anyone who is content, hard-working, or successful in this oh-so evil Capitalist world they live in. (Ayn Rand refers to those types as "moochers". She was being kind.) So naturally such viewers read everything into the movie that they wanted to read into it. I.e. that it's meant to about Western decadence, police brutality, 1968, bla bla bla. (If anything, there should be MORE police brutality, especially on May 1st.) With "Themroc", making these kinds of very personal (read: deluded) interpretations is very easy: the movie has no dialogue, at least nothing apart from various grunts and groans - which is how Leftist pumpkins sound to ME when they expose their ignorance by over-rationalizing the events in movies such as this one.Piccoli is very good as the labourer-turned-Neanderthal, in what is one of the most bizarre movies I've seen. A totally obscure little oddity that is a million times harder to find than any Godard or Truffaut. Unfortunate, because this happens to be one of the best French movies ever made. Forget all those supposedly brilliant, hilariously overrated French/Euro-trash politically-coloured "character-study" dramas; THIS film is worth your attention - unless you're squeamish, that is. There is incest, there is cannibalism, and other unsavory stuff going on. And yet, the movie is part-comedy. It is not to be taken too seriously. The visual look, that somewhat grainy 70s feel, also contributes to the quality.

Can a movie that sets itself up as being strange, over the top and generally whacky, still be too weird? Answer-YES! Too much of a bad thing does not make it worth the time to watch. Go rent "Eraserhead" instead.