Sa majesté Minor (2007)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud

Film Review

Aided and abetted by his faithful screenwriter Gérard Brach (who died shortly after filming got underway), director Jean-Jacques Annaud gave full flight to his imagination and succeeded in resurrecting the spirit of Aristophenes for his most gloriously unhinged film yet.  Sa majesté Minor is a film unlike any other, a post-modern quasi-Aristophenean sex comedy on steroids (or is it Viagra?) set in a mythical pre-Classical Utopia where the line between man and beast has yet to be drawn and where, to put it mildly, anything goes.  Happily unfettered by modern notions of good taste, the film transports us back in time, to an era in which mankind was truly free to live as nature intended, unburdened by the mountain of self-loathing and neurotic self-absorption which Christianity and other so-called civilising influences would later bring.  It is an era in which man is completely at ease with his bestial nature, worshipping the sex act as a life-bringing and life-affirming force of nature, not something that is sinful or corrupting.  In his most provocative and subtly allegorical film to date, Annaud makes a spirited attempt to challenge two millennia of moralistic prudishness which have robbed man of his identity, only to end up slipping up on the banana skin of bad taste.  The director's most artistically liberated film was not widely well-receved and proved to be his biggest commercial and critical flop.

Sa majesté Minor certainly deserves some of the bad criticism it has received. With its pedestrian episodic structure and uneven pacing, the film is beset with ennui-inducing longueurs that no amount of eye-popping cinematic artistry can correct for.  The characters are little more than the kind of grotesque comicbook creations you would expect to find between the covers of a Goscinny album (albeit one with an X-rating), poorly developed and prone to speak in the ugly vernacular which prevails in today's trashy film comedies.  However, what really got up the noses (and other less mentionable orifices) of most critics wasn't the above, but rather the film's perceived panoply of vulgarity.  Although Annaud is motivated by serious issues (such as contemporary attitudes towards sex and man's relationship with the natural world), the fact that he resorts to the kind of tacky low humour that most of us grow out of in our early teens does him few favours.

Sa majesté Minor may be crude but it is refreshingly bold and honest in its celebration of hedonism, and its ill-judged humour is adequately compensated for by the breathtaking originality of both its subject and design.  As in his previous fantasy romps - La Guerre du feu (1981) and The Name of the Rose (1986) - Annaud creates a vibrant dream-world that is way beyond our own experiences and yet which has its own coherent reality.  The sublime artistry of the film's visual composition gives the film a haunting poetic quality and surpasses anything seen in recent fantasy blockbusters (such as the over-hyped, overrated Lord of the Rings trilogy).  It draws us into a colourful realm of the imagination that is every bit as solid and welcoming as C.S. Lewis's Narnia (admittedly one in which randy centaurs do unmentionable things to one another in the forest).  However, the film's main appeal is the relish that its big name actors bring to their performances, appearing as we have never seen them before and will probably never see them again.

Looking uncannily like a cross-between Michel Simon and a wild-haired troll doll, José Garcia is virtually unrecognisable as the central character and once again impresses with his histrionic versatility.  Even when he is reduced to doing pig impressions, Garcia is irresistibly funny, and only he could get away with sporting the most outrageous hairstyle in a film since Elsa Lanchester's Bride of Frankenstein.  And where else could we ever hope to come across Vincent Cassel revelling in the career-defining role of a seriously over-sexed satyr?  Such is the enthusiasm and lubrucious abandon with which Cassel throws himself into his portrayal of the god Pan that you could easily think he had hankered after the role from the moment he first popped out of his mother's womb.  Mélanie Bernier makes a deliciously sensual femme fatale (the film's one grudging concession to female pulchritude), whilst veteran performers Claude Brasseur, Rufus and Jean-Luc Bideau are clearly having the time of their lives in roles that allow them to chew up the scenery with impunity.  Whatever shortcomings Sa majesté Minor may have in the script department are redeemed by the sheer energy and sense of fun that the cast bring to the film, at least for those of us who are not too easily offended by low comedy of the old Greek tradition.

Film Synopsis

Long ago, many years before Homer, on an imaginary island in the Aegean Sea, there lived a strange creature named Minor.  A dumb beast, half-man, half-pig, Minor lives a quiet and happy life in his sty with his affectionate sow.  One day, whilst exploring the forest, he meets the god Pan, who initiates him in the ways of Paganism.   Whilst perching on an olive branch to spy on Clytia, the daughter of the Patriarch, Minor falls and kills himself.  But Minor is not dead.  He comes back to life and has miraculously acquired the ability to speak.  The villagers are amazed by Minor's newfound eloquence and make him their king.  This is where the troubles really begin...