Désolé, Pardon, Je m’excuse or Excuse me, Sorry, Please Forgive me is the darkest of dark comedies, which I just caught at Fantasia and it’s charming as it is twisted. The film stars digital creator and onlyfans model Eva Prévost as Ella as an eccentric, bubbly, bright-eyed office worker who’s obsessed with torture videos she finds on the dark web. Explicitly those by her favorite torturer the masked Bloodlord. One day in between answering sales calls, while watching Bloodlord’s latest with her boss(?!), she announces that’s she’s a psychopath and wants to torture a person to death. Her boss, hopelessly in love with Ella and being the well intentioned enabler he is, gives her 2 days in his airbnb to see where this all goes, but he suggests she starts small, possibly with a dog or cat.
This has Ella going to the park that night on the prowl for a stray pet, when she comes across Donatien (Luc-Olivier Boutet) who happens to look like an easy target to her, so she bops him over the head with a trashcan and kidnaps him as her first victim. The hook is, once she gets Donatien back to the airbnb, she quickly realizes her prey is definitely okay with dying, and she is not cut out for torturing or killing. Ella then instead goes into a full on altruistic attempt to help Donatien and give him a reason to live, by kidnapping his crush – while still holding him hostage. What transpires is a playful and happily fucked up narrative – that while toying with some dark themes thankfully, never feels mean spirited or nihilistic.
The only thing that threw me off about the film was the look of it, with its overly bright lighting and the overall millennial gray production aesthetic, which appear to be something out of an adult film — not that I’ve ever seen one. This is a really odd call out but it really disarmed me when the captivating performances and frothy humor started kicking in, making it just that much more disarming. That and the fact that the film is very much a chamber piece almost completely taking place indoors, definitely had me wondering about the genesis of the project and the collective at work here.
Désolé, Pardon, Je m’excuse is a bit wacky at times, but thanks to its eccentric well intentioned protagonist and how her endless positivity fuels the subversive narrative, it works surprisingly well. Eva is a joyously well-intentioned agent of chaos and once we realize this film isn’t going to be about her discovering the wonders of killing humans, only then do we then really start to understand the odd humor at work here that had me laughing non-stop. Needless to say it’s not for everyone, but for those lucky few that can lock in to this wavelength, you’re going to laugh a lot, so get ready. Désolé, Pardon, Je m’excuse is the most fucked up, feel good movie you will ever see.
