By Bernard Besserglik
PARIS (Hollywood Reporter) - Some things will never change, not even during the apocalypse. Lovers of France can rest reassured that when the final trumpet sounds, our Gallic cousins will have their minds on sex, a bottle of fine wine in their kit bag as they attempt to escape, and time to take in a visit to the opera even as the bodies are piling up in the street. In the movies, at least.
In "Les Derniers Jours du Monde," as the world is falling apart for reasons that are never made quite clear -- there are references to a killer virus, earthquakes, nuclear bombs over Moscow and missile attacks on Paris -- Robinson Laborde (Mathieu Amalric) takes off in pursuit of the exotic Laetitia (Omahyra Mota), for whom he has already dumped his wife, Chloe (Karin Viard). His odyssey takes him from Biarritz on the Atlantic coast to Pamplona in northern Spain, back to Toulouse, which has meanwhile become the French capital, and eventually to a deserted Paris.
Along the way there are innumerable opportunities for Robinson to take off his clothes, not just with his lover and former spouse but also with Ombeline (Catherine Frot), his father's former mistress, and the mysterious Iris (Clotilde Hesme), not to mention, in a sexually ambiguous moment, his best friend of many years, the opera singer Theo (Sergi Lopez).
Sex-comedy elements mixed in with end-of-the-world scenes and a road-movie structure mean that writer-directors Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu's Happy End is distinctly messy and really rather silly, though perhaps not much more so than your average disaster movie. It's also frequently tongue-in-cheek -- or at least it's to be hoped that that's what is intended. Audiences will find much to laugh (or titter) at, notably Theo's amorous advances on Robinson and the orgiastic gathering in a remote chateau where the guests are as intent on consulting their emails as they are on taking part in the carnal proceedings.
The Larrieu brothers ("To Paint or Make Love") have a track record of bold, offbeat storytelling, and here, basing their scenario on the novel by Dominique Noguez, they have broadened their canvas, though perhaps with some loss of focus. The idea of Robinson having a prosthetic hand is a distraction, and 20 minutes, in particular the Hong Kong and Canada flashbacks, could usefully have been shaved from the running time. But the directors display a keen sense of spectacle, and the movie, which recently opened in France, should please audiences on condition that they don't take it too seriously.
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