A portrait of the artist as a young, good-looking film star

Moliere

Laurent Tirard

120 MINS, 12A

Taxidermia

Gyorgy Palfi

91 MINS, 18

Moliere goes along with the questionable theory proposed by Shakespeare in Love and Becoming Jane that great writers base most of their work on the secret love affairs they had back when they were young and good-looking enough to be film stars.

According to some of Moliere's biographers, there are three months, just before the playwright and his theatre group left Paris in 1645 to hone their craft on a 13-year tour of the provinces, that are not accounted for.

Moliere's not-entirely-serious proposition is that the 22-year- old spent those missing months learning all he'd ever need to know about the hypocrites, cuckolds, aristocrats and clergymen who would populate his plays.

Moliere (Romain Duris) is released from a debtors' prison when his bills are paid by Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), a nouveau riche buffoon who's desperate to get in with the nobility. In return for this payment, Moliere agrees to give Jourdain acting lessons, so he can woo a countess (Ludivine Sagnier). But while he's lodging in his patron's chateau, disguised as a priest, Moliere falls for Jourdain's wife (Laura Morante), and the layers of deceit pile up into a tottering tower.

There's one layer too many, but Moliere is still a cleverly constructed farce with all the lavish frocks and nuanced performances you could want from a period romantic comedy. Devotees of the playwright will enjoy spotting excerpts from his own writings, but I'm well qualified to state that this vivacious romp is a treat even if you're a complete ignoramus.

It's fair to say that Taxidermia isn't for everyone. But for viewers with broad minds and strong stomachs, this grotesque Hungarian satirical fantasy is bizarrely imaginative and shamefully funny.

It spans the history of post-Second World War Hungary in three parts. In the first, a downtrodden soldier vents his sexual frustration in ways I can't report in a family newspaper. This section concludes with the birth of Kalman, a baby with a pig's tale.

In the second segment, Kalman has grown up to be one of the Eastern bloc's champion speed-eaters. Surrounded by Soviet banners, he and his competitors kneel on a stadium stage, slurping their own bodyweight in soup, and then spewing it up between rounds.

In the present-day third segment, Kalman is so fat he can't move, but he's kept in lard and chocolate bars by his grown-up son, a skeletal taxidermist. It's not as weird as all that sounds, though. It's weirder.

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