Sacré Léonce: A comedy about a guy who really likes insects

Is this for you?

If you enjoy dry, old-school French farce where everyone is constantly flustered by social etiquette, you might find Sacré Léonce oddly sweet. If you need pacing, modern jokes, or characters that act like actual human beings, you’re going to be bored to tears within fifteen minutes. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I finished it, but there’s a weird, dusty charm to the whole thing that kept me from turning it off. 🦗

Léonce is an entomologist, which is just a fancy way of saying he’s a massive nerd who prefers beetles to people. The whole premise hinges on him being so clueless about romance that his new in-laws are genuinely freaked out. It’s a bit of a slow burn, if by 'slow' you mean 'almost standing still.'

Oddly specific observations

• The way Léonce looks at a jar of specimens is more intense than the way he looks at his own wife.
• The in-laws have this collective habit of fainting or clutching their chests that feels like it’s happening in every other scene.
• There is a door that squeaks in the background of the bedroom scenes that I swear is the loudest thing in the movie.
• I think the hat worn by the mother-in-law was actually a small birdcage. Maybe? It was distracting.

The comedy here is very old. It’s not exactly sophisticated, but it’s not mean-spirited either. You can almost feel the stage origins of the script, where everyone has to walk into a room just to deliver a line about how surprised they are. It’s stiff, sure, but sometimes the stiffness is where the humor hides.

Compared to something like Frenzy, this is a total walk in the park. It doesn't have the tension or the craft, but it has this weird, dated energy that you just don't see anymore. It’s like eating a piece of candy you found in a drawer from 1935. Is it good? Probably not. Is it memorable? Weirdly, yes.

There is this one scene where Léonce is trying to explain a butterfly collection while his wife is clearly waiting for him to say something—anything—romantic. He just keeps talking about wing spans. The silence that follows is so long it feels like the projector operator went to grab a coffee. It’s painfully funny in a way that I doubt the filmmakers intended. ☕

Don't look for deep meaning here. It’s not exploring the human condition or whatever. It’s just a movie about a guy who is bad at being a husband and great at pinning bugs to corkboards. Sometimes that’s enough for a rainy afternoon. Or maybe it isn't. Who knows.