Sur un air d'autoroute (2000)
Directed by Thierry Boscheron

Film Review

A good idea in search of a worthy script is possibly the fairest way to summarise Sur un air d'autoroute, the first feature from budding filmmaker Thierry Boscheron.  Boscheron had, seven years earlier, made a short film, Le Fond de l'air est frais, and would subsequently have a career as a television director on such shows as Plus belle la vie and Coeur océan, but his contribution to cinema has to date been pretty uninspiring.  Despite its wonderfully surreal premise - a man seeks his severed ear, not knowing it is in the hands of the woman he loves - Sur un air d'autoroute fails to build a coherent, attention-grabbing narrative and seems content merely to be off-puttingly weird for the sake of it.

Dominique Pinon - no stranger to eccentric fantasy fare, witnessed by his his Jeunet-Caro collaborations on high-profile films like Delicatessen and La Cité des enfants perdus - would perhaps have been a more natural choice for the lead role than Sacha Bourdo, although his supporting presence is a welcome addition.  Marie-France Pisier makes the greatest impression as the sinister Dr Rouget, a vampish, clearly unhinged scientist who is masquerading as a skin graft surgeon.

There is precious little else to distinguish this abortive film oddity, which might have functioned far more effectively as a thirty minute short.  Thanks mainly to a script that badly needed at least five more rewrites and a massive infusion of ideas, the characters are mostly as inconsequential and unengaging as the plot.  And whilst Boscheron does occasionally show some directorial flair and bravado, sustained creativity seems to be in painfully short supply.  The film's novelty value soon wears thin and once you've cottoned on to where the story is heading there's nothing much to surprise you - it's just a wearying and uneventful cruise down a mildly unsettling stretch of the imagination, without a service station in sight.

Film Synopsis

Jeff, a man in his late thirties, is desperate to be near to his former girlfriend, Périnne.  As she works at a toll booth on a busy stretch of road, he finds himself a job as a motorway maintenance worker.  Calamity strikes on the poor man's first day at work - his left ear is sliced off by a record hurled out of a car window by an irate motorist.  As Jeff is raced to hospital, his head streaming with blood, the stray ear lands in a passing car and goes on something of a random tour of the region before being recovered by chance by an unsuspecting Périnne.   At the hospital, Jeff is informed that unless his ear can be recovered within a few hours it will not be possible to graft it back on again.  To his surprise, Jeff discovers that, impossible as it might seem, he can still hear through his severed ear.  By paying attention to the sounds that the lost ear relays to him from some distance away, Jeff sets out on a desperate quest to find it before it is too late...