I came to this movie armed with no prior knowledge of the content, not even knowing that Isabelle Adjani was featured; the main selling point in my case was the great actress Yolande Moreau and I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that the writer-director team were also responsible for Louise-Michel, a vehicle for Moreau from 2008. It was, I found, referential, the central premise of Depardieu searching for documentary evidence of his work record harks back to Pinter's The Caretaker where the eponymous character refers more than once to 'my papers in Sidcuo' and the bizarre aspect of the film reminded one of Bertrand Blier's Buffet Froid which also featured Depardieu. Another fine actress, Anna Magloulis, turns in a fine cameo but Depardieu shoulders the lion's share of the weight as a man who has never taken a day off work in forty five years but unfortunately has spent those years in one dead-end job after another, some of them 'under the table' which is not much help in a bureaucracy when a pension is at stake. The main thrust of the film is a series of picaresque encounters some hit, some miss. Nice satire.
Review of Mammuth
