20/08/2024 - Jean-Baptiste Saurel helms a wacky, accomplished and very funny comedy about relationships between men and women

"You are too genital." Beware, oddity! With Zénithal, his first feature, released in French cinemas by The Jokers Films on 21 August, Jean-Baptiste Saurel ventures with astonishing and rather jubilant cheek into territory very rarely explored by French cinema - a completely madcap comedy on a very serious subject, that of the redefinition of relations between men and women in the area of sexuality. It's a foray so unbridled and Ubuesque that it's almost impossible to reveal the often hilarious details, given how far the filmmaker has pushed the envelope of audacity, with echoes of Judd Apatow's US "rom coms" and Hong Kong films à la Tsui Hark, on a thread of unabashed humour remotely reminiscent of a sort of post-modern Jerry Lewis.

Nevertheless, let's try to give a flavour of this zany filmic experiment, which opens with a prologue centred on a kung fu master, a 1990s star with an oversized sexual appendage, a veritable combat weapon, who has decided to put his career on hold and question himself ("the cock doesn't make the man") because "the world has changed" with "a new masculinity". Francis (Franc Bruneau) was the opponent of this man ten years ago, but today, as the simple owner of a dry cleaning business, he feels like a shadow of his former self ("worthless and useless, with no ambition, at the end of the cycle") and suffers particularly from the sexual abstinence imposed on him by his partner Sonia (Vanessa Guide) for six months and seven days. For Sonia, who teaches self-defence exclusively to women, it's a way of rekindling the flame in their relationship and learning to sublimate themselves.

But for Francis, this reversal of values is too destabilising, and the couple's misunderstanding is growing by leaps and bounds, especially as the situation is complicated by the discovery of a corpse with a severed penis onto which an electronic brain has been grafted (to the immense surprise of the investigators). A man (Xavier Lacaille), seemingly harmless but in reality a little Dr Frankenstein, guru of a sect of frustrated males, is on the prowl, dragging Francis into his masculinist crusade... Can Sonia and her friend Marcus (Cyril Gueï) save Francis? Will men and women find their way back to dialogue?

Highly inventive and very funny, Zénithal, the script for which was written by the director and Élodie Wallace, succeeds in imposing its highly offbeat universe, thanks in no small part to its meticulous direction. A natural candidate for cult status, the film may not appeal to everyone because it pushes the absurd to the limit, but it's certain to leave no one indifferent, and brings to light a filmmaker whose next flights of fancy we'll be keeping a close eye on.

Zénithal was produced by Kazak Productions. International sales are handled by Best Friend Forever. The film will be screened at Austin's Fantastic Fest (9-26 September 2024) and released in the US and Canada by Dark Star.

(Translated from French by Margaux Comte)