En bordée: A chaotic night out

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a very specific itch for early cinema comedy where everyone is yelling at each other in French. If you’re looking for a tight plot, you’re in the wrong place. If you just want to see people running around in circles because they lost their pants or their dignity, you’ll probably get a kick out of it.

Seriously, stay away if you need things like logic or character arcs that go somewhere. It’s a bit like watching a loud party through a frosted window.

The chaotic energy

The whole thing feels like it’s held together by duct tape and high-octane coffee. The sailors are constantly getting into trouble, mostly because they can’t seem to stand still for more than three seconds. It reminded me a bit of the frantic pacing in  One Week, but with less actual structure and a lot more shouting.

There’s this one scene where a door opens and closes about ten times too many. I started counting after the fifth time. It stopped being funny around the third, but then it looped back to being kind of hypnotic. 😵‍💫

Odd little things

• The extras in the background look like they’re waiting for a bus rather than reacting to the chaos.
• The music is… a lot. It doesn't seem to match the tone of the scenes half the time.
• I’m pretty sure I saw the same hat on three different people in the same sequence.

There isn't a deep message here, and the movie doesn't pretend there is. It’s just people being loud and clumsy for an hour. It’s not exactly The Tree of Knowledge in terms of depth, but it does have a weird, kinetic charm. You get the sense that the cast was just having a genuinely wild time, even if the camera work wasn't quite keeping up.

Sometimes the film just cuts to black for a split second too long, leaving you wondering if the projector died. It adds this weird, jagged rhythm to the whole experience. I didn't hate it. It’s just… very much its own thing. Not a masterpiece, but it’s definitely not boring, even when it’s bad.