Balibalo is the title of a stupid bawdy song that four stupid men sing in their car at the top of their lungs. The four males are so intent on singing and drinking beer that they fail to see a (very) young boy scout walking along the road: the accident is inevitable and proves fatal. When the four loafers realize what they have done, they are not only emotionally undisturbed but slightly upset ... for themselves! Weren't they on their way to Rachid's restaurant with a view to having a full-flavored Royal Couscous???!!!
From this moment on the tone is set: Marc Andréoni (who also plays Marco, the prisoner on leave)'s short film will be about how bad male buddies can get when they are in a gang and when their morality follows from their rate of ... testosterone!
The reaction to what they have done is tell-tale: first, the four men quarrel, each putting the blame on the other; then one kicks the body of the little boy wildly, another waits in the car obviously bored, and so on. It is only when one of them decides to get rid of the corpse that they find unity again... for worse!
Once the baseness of his four characters has been established, Andréoni switches to the second part of his narrative, in which the new Daltons embark on a killing spree, putting into practice their leader's motto: «No trace, no witness». But they do leave traces and there are far too many witnesses, the tragic (and farcical) escalation culminating in the elimination of the ... whole troop of scouts!
As the (crazy) end credits roll, the viewer is still laughing, but is on edge at the same time. It means that Marc Andréoni's first film as a director is ace! By making his four main characters a gang of circumstantial serial killers he has achieved a masterpiece of black humor (not unworthy of the classic of classics 'Cest arrivé près de chez vous'). On the other hand, he avoids indulging in complacency for crime (like Tarantino and his followers) by clearly condemning the dealings of the four protagonists. Well done!
Artistically speaking the film is craftily made: shot in Black and White 35mm (not in DV as some on the net claim), with the right amount of contrast, the film can boast excellent acting, nervous editing, an appropriately loud score that dins into you and a very effective sense of humor (among other gags, one of the fellows' recurring phone calls to the Couscous restaurant while horrors go on around him). Marc Andréoni is a great director: it takes him less than eight minutes to complete the telling of this wild senseless odyssey. His film is short of course, but ... hard to forget.
0 out of 0 found this helpful