Do you like your comedy black? Really black? If you mean really, really black, this is the film for you; in fact, the first half of the film is essentially a noir-ish thriller will fairly slim comedic pickings. And then it evolves into absolutely surreal hilarity; I loved it, but I can understand how elements of the plot would render it firmly in the “not for everyone” category.
Elle l’adore opens with a mother telling her children the story of a mishap; it is well-told and hilarious, and the point of it will become clear by the time you’ve finished watching the film. After a lunch, she takes the kids to travel back to their full-time home, presumably with their father.
This becomes a recurring theme in the movie; Muriel is an entertaining (and convincing) storyteller; it is her most notable characteristic, other than her life-long obsession with (fictional) pop star Vincent Lacroix; enchanted since her teens, she is now a middle-aged woman living alone in a house plastered with Lacroix posters and stuffed with memorabilia.
Lacroix’s relationship with his girlfriend is ended in the most permanent way possible: after they argue over his late-night party, she assaults him; responding in kind, he shoves her into a bookself, whereupon one of his awards falls on her head, killing her.
Not especially amusing so far.
Frantic, he looks for a solution to protect himself, and comes upon it: his number on fan. Packing the body into his car, he shows up to Muriel’s apartment asking her to leave him alone with her card and then drive into Switzerland, meet his sister, and hand her a letter. She must not open the boot. Muriel, overawed by the presence of her idol, quickly agrees. We see the operation in flash-forward; as he outlines the plan (Muriel crossing a sleepy border village, Muriel meeting the sister, Muriel leaving the car with the sister at her vetinary clinic with attached crematorium) we watch it proceed smoothly. Then we cut to Muriel calling Lacroix to assure him everything went as planned.
This is where the film shifts gears. Another plot thread with the police - a gang of dubious competence with an ongoing sub-plot around the dysfunctional romantic relationship between two of its members - emerges, investigating the disappearance of Victor’s girlfriend. Victor is initially calm: there is no body, no link to its disposal. What does he have to worry about?
Plenty, it will turn out, because of course the disposal went totally awry, in suitably hilarious fashion.
I’m not going to go into a blow-by-blow of the meat of the comedy (because spoiling the joke, duh), but it hinges on Muriel’s storytelling abilities. She conned Lacroix about the body, and when he tries to throw her to the suspicious wolves-in-blue as a suspect, she cons them, too, in the funniest moments of the film, and one of the most wonderful moments of any comedy I’ve seen in a while: calling in a lawyer friend to help her, she tells the him truth about what happened. He erupts, losing his temper completely: this is serious? Does Muriel not understand this is no time for her fantasies? She cannot lie her way out of this? Abandoned by her idol, and disbelieved by her friends, she turns in a bravura performance with the police: she has tried the truth and been called an idiot for it; now she will lie, and lie she does. She lies her way out of the cell and into freedom, and you cheer and laugh your way through every second of her Moment of Awesome.
The film ends with a delightful inversion, and a second Moment of Awesome for Muriel, a final twist I shan’t share here, but, for me, made this one of my favourite films of the festival last year.