Réussir sa vie (2012)
Directed by Benoit Forgeard

Film Review

For his first feature, maverick filmmaker Benoît Forgeard offers a compliation piece comprising his first three short films that is both unsettlingly weird and irresistibly funny.  The three films are loosely linked by sequences in which Forgeard, looking scarily like Super Mario's dandified older brother, meets up with the actors who appear in them, giving us a bizarre insight into his creative process as he does so.  Drawing influence from a range of filmmakers, most notably Luis Buñuel, whilst embracing the latest digital technology like an alcoholic in a wine cellar, Forgeard takes us on the wildest surreal mystery tour and delivers a blunt but stylish two-fingered salute to commercial cinema.

The most obvious connection between the three short films is that they all feature a young person who experiences a bizarre life-changing event.  In La Course nue, an actress is forced to run naked in a sports stadium to pay off her telephone bill.  In Belle-Île-en-Mer, a travelling salesman is unsure what to do with his life until he runs into Alain Souchon (played by someone who bears not the slightest resemblance to the famous singer).  L'Antivirus is about the relationship between an over-attentive computer repairman and a student whose years of painstaking research are threatened by a computer virus.  This summary hardly does justice to Forgeard's creative flair, which shows itself in the ease with which he combines some dazzlingly inventive visuals with a rare blend of poetry and laugh-out-loud comedy.  Réussir sa vie is definitely the oddest French film of 2012, an off-kilter bungee jump into the sublime depths of a totally uninhibited imagination.

Film Synopsis

An underground filmmaker is struggling to complete his latest film when he is visited by the characters of his previous films.  They take him off into three flights of fancy, three adventures involving young people who are prepared to do anything to make a fresh start in their lives.  The three stories appear to be pieces of a puzzle, but what can it mean...?