Review - Congorama
July 4th, 2008 John Posted in Film, Reviews |
“Congorama” did quite well in Canada, winning several awards for best film and found its way easily into their top 10 films of 2006 — this new release gives audiences in the United States a chance to find out why. It’s a delightful film, a voyage of self-
discovery via one clumsy visit to Canada, that starts out as one film and then turns itself inside out, becoming something else entirely
Oafish Michel (Olivier Gourmet) is a would-be Belgian inventor who can’t seem to invent anything that fires the imagination — or the purses of big business. His best inventions are a solar-powered robotic lawn mower that no one wants — most people assure him that they like mowing the lawn — and a wire de-icer that doesn’t inspire much in the corporations he tries to sell it to.
When Michel finds out he was adopted in Canada and brought to Belgium, he mixes a business trip with a gratuitous attempt to retrace his roots. He bumbles his way through it until it all ends abruptly, giving director Philippe Falardeau the chance to invert the entire experience and start the film over again, presenting the whole thing from an entirely different viewpoint. It starts out as a slice of life light comedy, but ends up as a comedic conspiracy film criticizing the movement of corporations and countries in co-opting the ideas of the small guy.
“Congorama” is also a film about identity and how a person forges his own. Are the shadows we live under those of biology or culture — or are they a mix of both that take strange forms and cause us to react in ways we don’t even understand — and might never? It’s a film that investigates secrets and realizations and how those conspire to create events with the illusion that there is a plan, rather than a series of interlinked accidents.
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