The Fairy (Thursday, February 23, 2012) (15)

In their last film, L'Iceberg, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy created a wonderful film based on dance, movement and physical comedy. It is a film reminiscent of the best of Jacques Tati, but a bit more gonzo, a bit off. In their newest film, The Fairy, they bring the same brightness and exuberance back for another tale of love and janky magic.

Dom (Abel) is a night clerk in a hotel in Le Havre, France. One night, as he's working, a woman shows up (Gordon) saying her name is Fiona and that she is a fairy who can give him three wishes. A bit surprised, Dom asks for a motor scooter as his first wish and unlimited gas as his second wish. Before he can come up with his third wish, the two begin making out and have sex.

It seems Fiona is the worst fairy ever, as her idea for unlimited gas for the scooter is to buy an oil container at the port that Dom can re-fill his small tank out of. She doesn't seem to have any really strong magic skills (though she does make one man fly) and her powers are mostly based on misdirection and cunning (like when she steals an outfit and shoes to wear on a date with Dom). As frequently happens, she gets pregnant and gives birth in a few minutes, and Dom and her have to care for their baby and avoid the people who get more and more frustrated with their clumsy, goofy behavior around the port city.

For me physical comedy is a really difficult thing. When done well (by masters like Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd or Tati) it is some of the most wonderful stuff on film; when done badly it's painful and forgettable. Gordon and Abel are new masters of physical comedy and add their own hilarious and off-beat twist to the gags. Certainly part of what makes them so appealing is that they're both individually rather strange looking (she's a bit like a more voluptuous Tilda Swinton, he looks like a drag queen out of makeup) and they play a lot with this.

They also run around Le Havre, which is a bit like a movie being set in Jersey City or downtown Miami (not the beachy part), it's ugly and is a failed Modernist concrete hellscape. They're laughing at the averageness of this world, and the idea that such a simpleton as Dom would want a scooter as one of his three wishes (when another man asks to be able to fly).

This is one of the most fun films I've seen in a long time. It's weird and hilarious, silly and wonderful.

Starts: 3.5 of 4