Barbaque: Marina Foïs and Fabrice Eboué replay “Bring in the accused”

It’s Christophe Hondelatte who tells us the disastrous fate of this couple of butchers who kill vegans, at the heart of the second part of the evening on TF1.

If you like Let the accused enterMichel Fugain, but not vegans, this teaser of Barbaque should please you! After having co-directed Starting point, The Crocodile of Botswanga and filmed solo Coexist, Fabrice Eboué returned at the end of 2021 with this comedy where he forms a couple of cannibals with Marina Fois.

Running a butcher’s shop, the two lovers accidentally kill a vegan who came to attack their shop. Not knowing at first how to hide the body, they decide to cut it up and sell it in small pieces to their customers. It is an unprecedented success, and the start of a fatal spiral…

After Barbaque, Fabrice Eboué shoots Gérald the Conqueror

This teaser therefore presented the couple as the assassins of the show Let the accused enterChristophe Hondelatte first describes them in front of a wall retracing their bloody crimes, before real images from the film follow, punctuated by the tube “Do like the bird” by Michel Fugain. A montage full of hemoglobin and absurd humor… Which is good in the final montage, the character played by Foïs being completely addicted to shows devoted to serial killers.

When it was released, Première was not 100% convinced by this scathing comedy, but still highlighted a handful of excellent mistakes, and this obsession with the Hondelatte show is one of them. Here is Thomas Baura’s review.

A couple of butchers stuck in a life that is too tidy among veal escalopes and pork chops, will awaken their business and their libido by selling human meat. Their victims, handpicked, all have the distinction of being vegan activists. The clientele, amazed by the succulent and subtle taste of this mysterious meat, inevitably asks for more, forcing Sophie (Marina Foïs) and Vincent (Fabrice Eboué) to destroy then sausage the poor buggers.

Fabrice Eboué first presents the picture of a provincial France all in clear lines and bright colors like Little Nicholas, to better dirty it and reveal its grotesque side. The discrepancy is embodied in all aspects of a story which constantly seems contaminated from within: it is the ordinary couple which becomes joyfully bloodthirsty, the rom-com which takes up residence in a black comedy, an interpretation assuming the game of caricature…

Eboué has fun while holding the reins of his film. In this type of exercise, it is important not to overload the effects too much so as not to unbalance the whole thing. Certain jubilant sequences (that of the corpse hidden behind the sofa for example) however make us regret that the actor-filmmaker does not trust himself more and does not dare to go to excess to touch on the uneasiness. Because what is he questioning here, if not a political correctness erected into a moral dictatorship? It prevents me from Barbaque brings a healthy bad taste to a French comedy walled in its blandness.

Marina Foïs comments on her film: Dad or Mom, Polisse, Mission Cleopatra…