La Machine à découdre (1986)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

By the mid-1980s, Jean-Pierre Mocky had already acquired a reputation for visceral anarchy with his films making increasingly virulent assaults on the failings of contemporary society.  La Machine à découdre is probably the most visceral and anarchic of all his films, and this could explain its present reputation as one of the director's least appreciated works - that and the terrible acting, sloppy direction and some unbelievably hideous music (which is so evocative of the 1980s you end up wishing the decade had never existed).  Mocky's adaptation of a crime novel by American writer Gil Brewer is as unhinged as the character he plays, a completely deranged psychopath who is obsessed with a humanitarian cause as he goes about slaughtering innocent bystanders.  It's a typically Mocky-esque self-portrait, and about as subtle as a three-legged diplodocus in a luminescent pink shell-suit.

Mocky's usual obsessions are trotted out with even less thought and coherence than usual so that La Machine à découdre ends up looking like nothing more than a demented rant from a very angry man, which is of course exactly what it is.  Mocky is right to be offended by how we in the privileged West salve our consciences by occasionally handing over a pittance to humanitarian charities whilst our political masters glibly sanction the sale of arms to those countries that are the cause of so many of the humanitarian disasters that so offend our delicate sensibilities.  We all know that Mocky loathes hypocrisies of this kind with every fibre of his being - and so should we - but instead of making his anger and disgust felt in a way that is likely to win others around to his way of thinking he merely goes on a debauched rampage, like a velociraptor with its tail on fire.

Mocky's laughably over-the-top excesses are apparent not only in the quantity of gratuitous violence he flings at us, a surfeit of gore that even Sam Peckinpah would have difficulty surpassing, but also in the amount of full-frontal female nudity he puts on display, mostly from his future wife and muse Patricia Barzyk.  It was a sad sign of the times.  With the thriller genre rapidly going out of style in the mid-1980s, filmmakers were having to resort to more extreme measures to attract an audience, so gory killings, naked ex-beauty queens and pointless chases scored by the most hideous synth music imaginable became de rigueur for all but the most restrained of policier film directors.  Perhaps the main problem problem with La Machine à découdre is that you can never be sure whether Mocky intended his film to be a scurrilous parody of this kind of film or whether he is merely aping its excesses so as not to appear out of touch with prevailing cinemagoing tastes.  In either case the pudding is over-egged somewhat.

Film Synopsis

In a coastal town in the south of France an unemployed man, Steff Muller, is desperate to raise cash as his wife is about to give birth.  The only asset he has left is the last gun in his collection of firearms, but as he drifts around town he fails to find a buyer.  Then he meets Ralph Enger, a strange man who is out collecting money so that he can build a hospital for the blind victims of war.  Having saved Enger from being knocked down by a coach, Steff is surprised when the curious individual begins following him around town.  They meet again in a café, where Steff does his best to interest its owner in his gun.  He cannot believe his eyes when Enger grabs hold of the weapon and shoots the café owner dead without any provocation.  Before the police arrive, the two men make a hasty exit.  At gunpoint, Steff is taken by Enger to an apartment where he is holding prisoner a naked woman, Liliane.  Realising that Enger is completely deranged, Steff and Liliane allow themselves to be caught up in his insane killing spree as the police try to hunt them down.  The next stop is the house of Steff's neighbours, which becomes the scene of another bloodbath...