This is an energetic celebration of an independent Paris radio station, Carbone 14. Three nights of mayhem in the studio, with wild and crazy characters Jean-Yves Lafesse ("The Buttock") and David Grossexe (no translation required) and friends. Sex in the studio, scandal in the papers, screaming in the air-waves - it looks like it should be a cool and exciting party. But though it's obvious the film-makers had a blast, they inexplicably forgot all about the audience.
To be fair, the director Jean-François Gallotte, who was present at my screening, admitted that, 20 years later, Carbone 14 is dated. But it's still hard to imagine how this could ever appeal to anyone who wasn't at the original party. It feels like a home video of a wild bachelor's party which happens to have some high-end hi-fi equipment handy. Like wedding photographs, it's a nice memory if you were there, it's a waste of time if you were not.
The action follows several presenters at the mike conducting phone-in shows. Dirty talk from the radio host, sweet innocence from the caller's side. Credible it is not. A woman presenter takes callers looking for the man who will give her sex tonight; she hangs up on one who says he has to eat his dinner first. It could have been funny, except that the joke is private; we're allowed to watch from the outside. Bizarrely incongruous in a fete of free, no-controls, democratic media.
Further excitement was provided by simulated on-air sex between two presenters, Lafesse and the hyperactive director M. Gallotte himself as David Grossexe. Both men liberate their genitalia in the frenzied heat of the moment. This scene goes on for ever - I wish I could last that long - and since it's such a minor joke I wondered where the interest was supposed to be. As I was to discover after a very long 80 minutes, this could also be asked of the whole film.
If you have ever worked for or listened to Carbone 14 during the early 1980s, I highly recommend this film. You were there! The rest of us would be better off to stay home and listen to the radio.
