Summary
Themroc is a typical blue-collar worker working for a typical medium-sized factory.
When he is caught spying on his boss he is reprimanded, and he instantly rebels.
He throws off the yoke of civilisation and immediately reverts to stone age behaviour.
When he returns home, he ravishes his sister and starts to create an urban cave out of
his apartment. Then the police arrive…
Review
In this alternately disturbing and humorous film, controversial director Claude Faraldo
paints a bleak picture suggesting that a reversion to the stone age may be preferable
to living the stale sanitised existence which modern society offers. It is clearly
a product of its time – the late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of great societal
and cultural upheaval in France. This sense of rebellion and the embracing of anarchistic
notions made its presence felt in many French films of this period, and Themroc
is probably the most famous example of this.
With no intelligible dialogue (all characters speak in either a non-recognisable corruption
of French or neanderthal grunts), the film relies entirely on its visuals for impact.
Although there is a lot of tedious repetition, there are also some very memorable scenes,
such as Themroc’s frustrated attempts to catch a train and the graphic barbecue
of a policeman. Also notable is the scene where Themroc knocks a hole in his apartment
wall and starts throwing all of his mod cons out into the street.
Michel Piccoli’s virtuosity as an actor is well known, but here he surpasses himself
as the would-be caveman Themroc. He does not utter a single comprehensible word
but you feel that you understand what makes him tick and why he behaves as he does.
(Piccoli is also reputed to have poured a substantial amount of his own money into making
the film.)
Nowadays the film is regarded more as a curiosity piece than anything else, a faded postcard
from the time when garish tank-tops and simulated anarchy ruled O.K. However, the
film’s imagery is so powerful that it should have a resonance with a modern audience.
© James Travers 2000
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