Event

THEMROC

With only a vague U.S. release and a blind eye turned by all but the most annoyingly nerdy film buffs, this surreal French satire doubles as a pitch-black freak-out. But when writer/director Claude Faraldo starts to lose it and settle for straight absurdism, THEMROCs bizarre view of working-class revolution is, as Shock Cinema puts it, worth a look, if only for its audacity. The most inspired aspect of this Working Class Rant is the fact that nobody on-screen utters a single word of intelligible dialogue, with the entire story told in grunts, howls or simple gibberish. At first glance, the middle-aged Themroc (Michel Piccoli) seems like your typical, brutish, dirty-undershirted factory laborer. And his day goes straight into the crapper once he arrives at his dreary job, and is called onto the carpet after playing voyeur on a manager and his leggy secretary. With a lifestyle this demeaning and repetitious, its no big surprise when Themroc suddenly goes bonkers, and for the first time in his miserable life, breaks free of his 9-to-5 shackles. The second he gets home, this disgruntled wacko wrecks his apartment (unlike modern-day Americans, whod prefer to grab a gun and shoot their boss) and begins acting like a modern-day Neanderthal.