Bloody Oranges: monstrously funny French comedy

“He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime,” wrote Cormac McCarthy in his 2006 novel The Road. In Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s second film, Bloody Oranges, there is much punishment: severe and disproportionate. But what is proportionate in this age of extremes? And what can we condone and what condemn? What is permissible and what is laughable? In a series of interlinked vignettes, Meurisse offers a photofit portrait of Emmanuel Macron’s France that is at once hilarious, grotesquely exaggerated and as slippery as an eel in a bucket of spit.

The opening scene has a panel of judges for a regional dance context descend into a furious, self-righteous exchange of opinions, as if Twitter had been made flesh. Their ludicrous passion is at odds with the banality of the contest, but everything here is deceptive and the stakes for a couple of OAP rock dancers (Olivier Saladin and Lorella Cravotta) couldn’t be higher: their financial salvation, indeed their whole future, hinges on their winning. Their son (Alexandre Steiger), a successful lawyer, is male fragility bubble-wrapped in resentment. He works for a political fixer (Denis Podalydès) who has sublimated his libido into Machiavellian manoeuvring. The fixer is currently preoccupied by how to free finance minister Stéphane (Christophe Paou) from a potential scandal: Stéphane has been stowing his wealth abroad while pursuing vicious austerity measures, all the while mouthing ‘solidarity’ as his watchword. The only untainted innocent among the lot is Louise (Lilith Grasmug), a sixteen-year-old who approaches her first serious sexual encounter with a mix of trepidation and thirst.

Each vignette plays out like a playlet. The dialogue – by Meurisse and his fellow screenwriters Yohann Gloaguen and Amélie Philippe – stings with irony and wit, and the scenes shift in ways that repeatedly wrongfoot audience expectation. A gynaecologist gives wise, sex-positive advice to Louise in between burpy bouts of acid reflux. Alexandre’s girlfriend punctures his posturing misogyny with an emasculating remark that refuses him the dignity of being taken seriously. “You must never be politically correct. You must be borderline indecent,” Alexandre is soon told by his political mentor, who might be seducing him.

At the bleeding core of the film, two scenes of rape and one of stomach-tilting revenge push past the limits of satire and into the ‘indecent’. Our moral compass has been grabbed and is now being shifted around in a shell game we’re bound to lose. Can sexual assault be a form of comeuppance? Is the first such scene, in fact, somehow funny? If you thought so, well… what about the next one? Our absolutes melt, and we’re left with a cold puddle of relativity – “Context!”, as one character insists.

It’s tempting to write off Meurisse’s film as the cinematic equivalent of an edgelord comedian trolling ‘snowflakes’ and the ‘PC’ brigade, but he’s much more anarchic than that, and far more transgressive. The film carpet-bombs French society, from rude taxi-drivers to sushi-eating psychopaths, encompassing and j’accusing the audience as well. Yes, Macron-style politics is hypocritical – assaulting the poor and the welfare state while clucking at the misdeeds of the wealthy – but our hatred for politicians is too self-satisfied and vengeful, suggests Meurisse. Avoiding victim-blaming is not as simple as it seems: for instance, the old couple in financial difficulty also live in a huge house they obstinately refuse to consider selling. They’re hardly on the breadline; they’d just rather be dead than not bourgeois.

The acting of the ensemble is close to perfect, as apparent stereotypes reveal their depths and real people are flattened out. The verbal exchanges spark from a family gathering to a political meeting where politeness and affability barely disguise the knife fight. Acclaimed clown Fred Blin deserves particular mention as a truly monstrous character.

Bloody Oranges will divide audiences with its cynicism and its shifts in tone from sophisticated verbal satire to shocking violence. There are frequent arguments in the world of comedy about humour that punches up and humour that punches down. Meurisse punches both ways and delivers a kick in the groin to boot. Yet he also allows for almost miraculous moments of triumph and humanity. The film asks us as an audience: aren’t we in danger of becoming like the judges of the dance contest – smug, pretentious frauds? But it also winks at us, as if to say: life may be a horrific, revolting, meaningless tragedy, but it’s not all bad.

► Bloody Oranges is in UK cinemas now.