I’m not typically one for “trigger warnings,” but this week’s film is hard to watch.  I’ve seen some pretty foul stuff in all the crappy B-grade horror flicks I consume, and I have, perhaps sadly, become immune to most shocking material.  Just writing that sentence made me feel convicted… dang.

But my crushing Pentecostal guilt can wait until after this film review.  This flick, the 2021 French black comedy Bloody Oranges (or Oranges sanguines in French) possesses some truly difficult scenes to endure.  I found myself watching through my fingers at a couple of points in the film.

It’s an incredible movie, a movie I will heavily discourage most readers from watching.  My parents, my aunts, Audre—don’t watch it.  Read some reviews if your curiosity is piqued, but don’t watch it.  Ponty, you could probably handle it, even though I know how much you hate the frogs.

Bloody Oranges is essentially two films in one.  The first half is a severe satire of modern day French society, with all of its inanities and pedestrian vices.  If you think that makes it inaccessible to American viewers, think again—as with all such banal evils, they’re fairly universal:  road rage, deep indebtedness, intergenerational squabbling, political corruption, political correctness, polarization, and the like.  The second half is a Tarantino-esque murder/revenge/suicide/something-else-horrible situation, taking the everyday evil of the first half and ramping it up exponentially.

The two halves work together, as they bring seemingly disparate story threads and characters together in gruesome fashion, and while I’ll discourage this advice, you could watch the first half and come away with a humorous, albeit incomplete, short film about the foibles of the petite bourgeoisie (of which I am a happy member, insofar as ludicrous Marxist categories can apply to a free man).

The film follows several characters:  a deeply indebted couple who seek to ameliorate their financial woes by winning an SUV in a rock ‘n’ roll dance competition; a sixteen-year old girl looking to get it on with her boyfriend; a telegenic Finance Minister with some skeletons to hide; and a bristling, overworked attorney, who I believe is the son of the the dancing couple (all these French people look the same, you know).  There’s also a minor character in the form of a greasy, long-haired, bug-eyed cab driver with road rage.  He looks a bit like a filthy Steve Buscemi.

The flick opens with a boisterous group of dance judges in a school gym debating the merits of advancing a dancer with a limp to the finals.  The predictable arguments and counterarguments fly:  it’s “positive discrimination”; the limp is “confident”; we should celebrate “the handicapped”; we should treat the handicapped the same as everyone else; there should be a dance contest just for handicapped people, like the Paralympics; and so on.  Finally, one of the judges, a frizzy-haired lady that would be at home in most college gender studies departments, goes on a pro-handicap screed before devolving into hysterical tears.

Then the producer/host of the contest walks up and tells the judges, “Try to advance the elderly couple.  The sponsors would like to see that.”

That’s the kind of deadpan satire in Bloody Oranges.  The entire movie is a running commentary on the ludicrous dance we all engage in every single day in the modern, Western world.  How do we judge something on merit or skill anymore when we’re always worried about how our choices will be dissected and perceived by the “sponsors”—the Internet, our boss, our company, our community, etc.?  How do we have productive conversations that don’t result in a hysterical woman breaking down into petty tears?

The Finance Minister has his own problems—money invested in another country, money which he insists was not embezzled from the French taxpayers.  His Prime Minister—a guy who looks like Donald Pleasence and who is constantly making seedy jokes about gay sex—promises to deal with the problem, then sends the Finance Minister to a meeting, where he and his technocrats must find 22 billion Euros to cut from the country’s budget.  The discussions they have are hilarious and disturbing—doubling tuition in public universities; cutting pensions; etc.  They crassly comment on the political impact of their decisions, not once thinking about the human impact.  Some of their ideas are actually good, but the sense from the scene is that they’re not trying to make decisions for the benefit of the French people, but rather to get the extra money needed with as little political blowback as possible.

The overworked attorney is hard to watch because he just seems like an extremely unpleasant person.  At the dinner for his mother’s sixtieth birthday, he complains about everything:  the restaurant, the menu, the décor, the lame gift his father gives his mother—on and on, endlessly.  It is draining and stressful to watch that meal.  Anyone who has ever been at a family dinner with someone who is stubbornly, persistently surly will feel the pain of this scene vividly.

The sixteen-year old girl is one of the least interesting characters—until she suddenly becomes the most fascinating character.  She wants to lose her virginity to her boyfriend, and consults a gynecologist.  The French OB/GYN speaks very frankly about the mechanics of lovin’, while also suffering from heartburn.  It’s a weird scene, but not simmering with sarcastic, satirical undertones like the other scenes I’ve referenced.  Perhaps that is intentional—the girl is still an innocent, and life is a grand adventure for her.  That changes dramatically in the second half of the film.

There is a lot going on in this movie.  To give a scene-by-scene recap would be grueling and pointless.  Yet even with all the scenes, it clips by.  I never felt bored, and I was glued to the screen (and not just because I had to read the subtitles).  Every little scene was a crumb of the dysfunction of all of these people, and I kept waiting to see what would happen next.

The big twist comes when the Finance Minister, deep in the French countryside, breaks down on his way to some kind of elitist orgy.  He seeks a mallet from a weirdo in a kimono in a nearby house.  This weird individual feeds Chinese food to his massive pet pig with chopsticks, and it’s clear there is something seriously wrong with this dude.

After a strange exchange, he drugs the Finance Minister with fentanyl and proceeds to do something with him that we now celebrate with parades and rainbows every June.  He then drives the Finance Minister to the French Parliament building and handcuffs him to the gate.

It gets worse:  on the way home, he stumbles upon the sixteen-year old—fresh off of losing her maidenhood to her awkward boyfriend—and kidnaps her.  He then proceeds to do the same awful thing he did to the Finance Minister to her.

It gets even worse:  the girl wakes up and manages to escape.  As she is about to leave, she decides to return and tortures the rapist.  He totally deserves everything she does to him, but it is brutal.  If you’re a man, you’ll be wincing and covering your face—that should tell you at least some of what happens.

Meanwhile, the elderly dancing couple lose the competition by one vote to the same set of squabbling judges.  In their despair at losing their home and everything they own to the bank, they commit suicide while holding hands.

Again, this movie is brutal—it is hard to watch.  But it’s like a car wreck, or a girl who has made herself into a “boy” via horrible surgery:  people (apparently) can’t look away.

But it ends on a redemptive note:  the sixteen-year old goes to court because, although she is the victim, she went back and tortured the guy severely.  She wins the case, and walks off into Paris holding her boyfriend’s hand.  The surly taxi driver, gets t-boned right after they clear the intersection unscathed, and it’s implied that the impact does him in.

I mean, that wasn’t positive, but he was a pretty bad dude, too.

I know I’m not selling this film well, especially when I tell you not to watch it.  Of course, that’s likely to make more people watch it.  But, trust me, it’s good.  I mean, it’s terrible, but it’s amazing.

Just like this review, Bloody Oranges is full of the contradictions of modern life.  The juice is worth the disgusting squeeze.