Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Charlotte Rampling | ... | Margaret Jones | |
Anthony Higgins | ... | Peter Jones | |
Victoria Abril | ... | Maria | |
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Anne-Marie Besse | ... | Suzanne |
Nicole Calfan | ... | Hélène | |
Pierre Étaix | ... | Le détective / Detective | |
Bernard Haller | ... | Robert | |
Sabine Haudepin | ... | Françoise, la prostituée | |
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Christopher Hovik | ... | Nelson Jones |
Fabrice Luchini | ... | Nicolas | |
Diana Quick | ... | Camille | |
Milena Vukotic | ... | Margaret's Mother | |
Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu | ... | Archibald (as Bernard Pierre Donnadieu) | |
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Thomas Austerweil | ||
Bonnafet Tarbouriech | ... | Le vétérinaire (as Pierre Bonnafet) |
Peter is a British diplomat in Paris. He is told by a detective that his wife, Margaret, has rented a flat where she spends quite a few hours monkeying around with a lover - a chimpanzee called Max. The relationship is serious, heartfelt, and sexual, so Peter invites the chimp to live with them.
Interesting - an international co-production that results in a real creative fusion, not the usual mush. This movie pits deadpan surrealist aesthete Jean-Claude Carriere's script against tantrum-prone transgressor Oshima in the service of a narrative where Charlotte Rampling falls in love with a chimpanzee. In spite of the rampant in-your-face perversity, though, Carriere holds the balance of power - Oshima wouldn't have thrown in that climactic victory parade, and I doubt he could have pulled off such an informed spoof of the French bedroom comedy on his own. The bemused passivity of the husband can get a little cloying, but it's pretty remarkable how viscerally sensual the movie gets in the Rampling-chimp lovey sequences. And that goes double once you realize that it ain't no chimp - it's another Rick Baker masterpiece for ya, so that makes three auteurs.