Max mon amour Series: In the Realm of Oshima [46th NYFF Sept. 27 – Oct. 14, 2008 ] Director: Nagisa Oshima, Country: France/USA/Japan, Release: 1986, Runtime: 98
Produced by Luis Buñuel’s longtime producer Serge Silberman and co-scripted by Buñuel’s writing partner Jean-Claude Carriere, Max mon amour brilliantly channels the wily old Spaniard’s surrealist sensibility for a look at the travails of a respectable household invaded by an amorous ape. Anthony Higgins and Charlotte Rampling play Peter and Margaret Jones, a highly respectable British diplomatic couple living in Paris. One day, Margaret brings home the lover for whom she’s developed a mad passion: Max, a chimp she picked up at the zoo (their eyes met, and the rest was romantic history). Higgins does his best to keep a stiff upper lip, but events soon spin out of control.
Oshima brilliantly calibrates the action, slowly ratcheting up the absurdity of the proceedings as the family (except Max) does its best to act natural. In the Village Voice, Amy Taubin called the film “a hilarious send-up of the French sex comedy…Max mon amour is as stunning an investigation of sexual love as, dare I say it, Rules of the Game.”
