Paradis pour tous (Brainwash – Ein Mann in Bestform)

Alain Durieux, smiling winningly, drives in his wheelchair through a futuristic-looking house equipped with the latest home and video technology. His cheerful wife is having fun in the swimming pool with another man, while Durieux sits down at his desk and writes down his story: How, thanks to the invention of the doctor Valois - who is currently bathing with his wife - a depressed, suicidal man became a model of happiness, how he found the company of other unhappy people who spread zombie-like thanks to ‘flashage’ therapy. Bringing together many motifs from his earlier films, Jessua directs at the height of his subversive powers: somewhere between Jacques Tati, Aldous Huxley and George Romero stands this work, which, masquerading as a casual satire, mercilessly tells a nightmare of the future of mankind. (G.V.)