39.90
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | 39.90 |
| Original title | 99 francs |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jan Kounen |
| script |
Nicolas & Bruno Jan Kounen |
| production |
Alain Goldman Marc Vadé |
| music |
Jean-Jacques Hertz Erin O'Hara François Roy |
| camera | David Ungaro |
| cut | Anny Danche |
| occupation | |
| |
39.90 (original title: 99 francs ) is a French feature film by director Jan Kounen from the year 2007. The film is a screen adaptation of the bestseller Neununddreißigneunzig by Frédéric Beigbeder . The novel and film have autobiographical traits.
action
Octave Parango is young, talented, has a lot of money and is one of the most successful creatives in his field. He works for the largest agency Ross & Witchcraft in Paris and decides today what the world will buy tomorrow. Octave writes his creative concepts within a few minutes and is celebrated as a genius. The women stand in line with him. It is only when he meets and loses his great love Sophie that his life begins to totter in the fast lane. Octave realizes that he is himself a victim of a system and begins to doubt himself and his illusory world. After a cocaine overdose, he ends up in a clinic. Despising his existence, he forges plans to bring Ross & Witchcraft to a subversive plot to kill its most important customer, yogurt maker Madone.
He then learns that his supervisor has committed suicide, which promotes him. This gives him the opportunity to implement his plan, which then succeeds. He and his accomplices celebrate the successful rebellion with a drug intoxication and run over some passers-by; but they manage to escape the police at first (shown in an animated film sequence). Back in Paris, Octave learns that Sophie also shot herself together with his superior. In addition, the police were able to identify and track him down. In desperation, Octave flees to the roof of the agency building. He falls down and dies.
The viewer is then invited to see an alternative ending. This alternative starts immediately after Octave has run over several people while drugged. But now it turns out that he didn't really have someone on his conscience, he just hallucinated. In Paris he concludes with his old life and fakes his own death. He enjoys the effects of his act of revenge against the advertising industry and then moves to the jungle where he wants to lead a dropout life. That goes wrong when Octave almost starves to death. He is rescued by locals and lives among them for some time. The alternative ending closes with Sophie tracking him down and they are happily reunited.
Then it turns out that this reunification is also depicted on an advertising poster that Octave sees during his crash from the agency building. There is therefore no single clear ending to the film.
History of origin
Beigbeder was himself a successful copywriter for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam when he wrote the novel. He made up his alter ego, Octave, in order to get fired himself. The book, published in Germany by Rowohlt Verlag, was sold 250,000 times in hardcover and paperback. The film, in which Beigbeder himself repeatedly appears in several sequences, is a weird satire about consumption, drugs and the world of advertising. The film adaptation differs in part from the book: The brutal murder from the book was not filmed, instead the viewer sees a comic sequence in which Octave and Charlie run over people in Miami while on drugs. The alternative end of the book is also shown in the film. Octave meets Sophie and her child in a kitschy dream setting in Central America and shows the opening scene again, which became the Billboard poster. This closes the circle. Like the endless loop of over 3,000 advertising messages that each of us is confronted with: Again and again, every day.
Cinematic implementation
The film makes use of a variety of visual and cinematic stylistic devices. So get flashbacks , alternative actions, fast collages of pictures and clippings of other movies, comic books and Off commentaries used. In some cases, scenes are similar in their design to music clips , other parts are underlaid with typical advertising music or contain faded-in marketing slogans and price information as in commercials.
Reviews
"An aesthetic overkill on the level of a long-term commercial that comes up with shrill ideas, but quickly becomes exhausting and tired."
“With macabre humor and well-dosed sarcasm, lead actor Jean Dujardin leads the viewer through an exciting collage of subversive images and surreal visions. The visual ingenuity with which Kounen transfers the fragmentary structure of the novel to the canvas is simply breathtaking. […] Conclusion: Original, provocative and evil: Jan Kounen's industry satire is much better than the bestseller of the same name. "
"Jan Kounen packs the message that they can all be bought as a biting effect spectacle full of psychedelic images and trendy animations."
Awards
In 2008 Jocelyn Quivrin received the French film prizes Étoile d'Or , Prix Lumières and the Patrick Dewaere Prize for best young actor. In the same category he was nominated for the César in 2008.
literature
Frédéric Beigbeder: Thirty-nine ninety-nine: 39.90 . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2001. ISBN 3-498-00617-7 .
Web links
- 39.90 in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- 39,90 at rotten tomatoes (English)
- 39.90 in the online film database
- 39.90 on alamodefilm.de
- Hitler, Goebbels and the advertising industry - article at Telepolis
- Content and criticism on franzischerfilm.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for 39.90 . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2008 (PDF; test number: 114 535 K).
- ↑ 39.90. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cf. cinema.de
- ^ TV Digital , No. 17, August 8, 2008.
- ↑ Et les gagnants sont ... In: L'Express , No. 2957, p. 24.