Time Has Come

A few years ago, Guiraudie made a film (‘Ce Vieux Rêve Qui Bouge’/‘Real Cool Time’) which, while a little enigmatic, was both perfectly comprehensible and one of the best French movies of recent years. His next (‘No Rest for the Brave’) was basically bonkers, however, and this continues in the same vein. Actually, it’s probably closest to his first featurette (‘Sunshine for Scoundrels’), in that it seems to be set in some timeless realm (‘Obitanie’) reminiscent of the medieval era and features folk wandering the world engaged in a bizarre cat-and-mouse chase and often using unfamiliar/arcane words. There are bounty hunter, bandits, inventors, gay sex and God knows what in the mixture; sometimes it feels like Swiftian satire, at others like utter nonsense. What can you say of a film that includes the deathless line: ‘A man can’t spend his time sucking herdsmen off!’?