Review: Bigbug is a sparkling comedy that lifts the spirits and dazzles the eyes

There has been a fair amount of controversy in Hollywood about streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Hulu shifting from merely showing films to actually producing them. I generally think the development is a positive one, especially for innovative mid-budget films that might otherwise never see the light of day. Case in point: without Netflix, I might never have had the privilege of watching the delightfully quirky Bigbug, the latest film from visionary French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

Any new film from Jeunet is an unequivocal treat. I’ve been a fan ever since his brilliant debut feature film, the 1991 post-apocalyptic (very) dark comedy Delicatessen, co-directed with Marc Caro. The inhabitants of a rundown tenement in France must rely on a butcher named Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who runs the shop on the ground floor, for meat because food is in such short supply. The source of that meat? Clapet hires desperate men as cheap labor, then kills and butchers them.