Bloody Oranges

Few movies swap genres halfway through, and even fewer do so successfully. “Bloody Oranges” does both.

A savage black comedy and an up-to-the-moment commentary on contemporary society, Bloody Oranges launches a broadside on political correctness.

Bloody Oranges somehow registers itself as an important film and proves significant in every cinematic sense.

Bloody Oranges isn’t a heavy-handed polemic. It’s more a genre-hopping experiment: sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying. Meurisse’s pluck is admirable, even though — or perhaps because — he’s made something often incredibly unpleasant.

It’s a strange film; it rattles fiercely along, but its relentless cynicism and nihilism leaves a sour taste and opinion may divide as to exactly how funny it is. Podalydès gives an entertainingly blase performance as the worldly image consultant, trying to seduce Alexandre over lunch.

Taken as a whole, the film is the quintessence of “mixed bag,” with some sketch situations, characters and performances commanding our attention, and others just sort of drifting by, “connecting” the disparate stories but accomplishing little else.