GROSSE FATIGUE

Here is the honest tension. GROSSE FATIGUE is, by the measure of pure filmmaking, a small gem — a clever, well-directed dark comedy with wit to spare. That is exactly why we have to be clear about the rest.

The film is soaked in content a Christian conscience can't wave away: some thirty obscenities, implied rape and orgy, forced homosexuality, and pointed mockery of a miracle and of Easter Sunday. It is not a matter of one bad scene you could look past. The worldview and the offense are woven through the whole.

So even though the craft is real, our answer is simple: skip this one. A movie can be well-made and still not worth what it asks you to sit through. Save your evening — and your conscience — for something that feeds instead of fouls.

Michel Blanc plays a version of himself: a famous French writer-actor on the edge of a nervous breakdown. A scriptwriting deadline looms — and worse, he's suddenly being blamed for a string of crimes and improprieties he has no memory of committing.

Hiding out at the country home of his co-star, Carole Bouquet, to finish his work, Michel begins to piece together the source of his troubles. Someone is trading on his fame. As the chase begins, he tumbles into a comic nightmare where even his own identity starts to slip. That's as far as we'll take you.

Three stars, and they're honestly earned. The directing, editing, and camerawork are masterfully done, and the score plays a superb counterpoint against which the whole film unfolds. As an allegory it works splendidly, making exquisite use of double entendre and irony.

Where it stumbles is thematic: a film about a man losing his identity ends up losing its own, working better as a clever idea than as a satisfying story. Still, the craftsmanship is not in dispute. This is a skilled filmmaker in full command of his tools. That's precisely what makes it a shame — the talent is real, and it's spent on material we can't send you toward.

GROSSE FATIGUE lives in an existentialist and nihilistic world, and it doesn't leave the question of faith alone. The film carries anti-biblical elements, mocking a miracle and making sport of Easter Sunday itself — the very day at the center of the Christian hope. That's not incidental color; it's part of the film's attitude toward meaning.

The story is built around a man who no longer knows who he is — a genuinely resonant premise. Identity, doubled and stolen, becomes the engine of the comedy. But the film has no ground to stand on beneath the vertigo. If there is no Author, a self can be impersonated away to nothing, and the movie seems half to believe that.

Scripture answers the panic the film only stages. Your identity is not a role that can be stolen or forgotten; it is given and kept by the One who made you: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" (Isaiah 43:1). Where the film mocks Easter, the Christian rests on it — because the empty tomb is the reason the self is safe at all.

There's real skill here — a funny, sharply made comedy that knows what it's doing. But the pervasive profanity, sexual immorality, and open mockery of the faith put it out of bounds. So our answer stands: skip it. Looking for something to watch instead? Start with our latest family-friendly picks.