The Suicide Shop Belgium, Canada, France 2012 – 80min.

Movie Rating

Le magasin des suicides

Movie Rating: Agathe Tissier

A happy boy tries to sabotage his family's suicide business to stop the carnage and bring a smile back to the city.

In the midst of crisis, life is not worth living and everyone's faces are as bleak as the weather in this grey and humid city. Only the suicide shop is doing business: a family enterprise that's been going strong for several generations, offering a veritable plethora of options for sending oneself to the sweet hereafter – with never an unsatisfied customer. Until the youngest in the family has the bad taste to never cry or complain in this world with no future. Even worse: he laughs all the time and his happiness is threatening to scare away customers and kill business. And worse yet: he's determined to teach everyone in the neighborhood how to smile again...

While the film never quite lives up to its promise of sardonic, black and caustic humor, it's mostly due to the fact that the story is sung. Patrice Leconte's free interpretation of the book by Jean Teulé, meant for adult audiences, is dragged down by dialogues sung by the cast like a children's choir, cheerfully shrieking its wish to make all humanity smile. A cinematographic suicide!

28.11.2012

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