P'tit Quinquin

Here’s heavyweight French auteur Bruno Dumont demonstrating his gift for deadpan comedy. In a small coastal community near Calais, a bumbling, twitchy police inspector and his permanently bemused sidekick are investigating a bizarre case: someone has been stuffing local cows with human body parts.

Dumont plays along with murder-mystery expectations – throwing in red herrings and shifting suspicions – but also manages to balance ‘Twin Peaks’-style madcap running gags with a serious meditation on human evil. These ideas are played out through the title character, a skinheaded little tyke who’s angelically innocent or a nasty, racist troublemaker as the mood takes him (challenging the audience like so many of the unruly, defiant, non-pros Dumont casts for their authenticity).

‘P’tit Quinquin’ was shot as a four-part series for French television (and it’s two hours, 20 minutes long), but with its skewed wit and observations of the human condition, most definitely belongs on the big screen.