''Bye Bye Monkey'' (, ) is a 1978 Italian-French

comedy-drama Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...

film, directed by

Marco Ferreri Marco Ferreri (11 May 1928 – 9 May 1997) was an Italian film director, screenwriter and actor, who began his career in the 1950s directing three films in Spain, followed by 24 Italian films before his death in 1997. He is considered one of t ...

and starring

Gérard Depardieu Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (, , ; born 27 December 1948) is a French actor. An icon of French cinema, considered a world star in the same way as Alain Delon or Brigitte Bardot, he has completed over 250 films since 1967, most of which as ...

Marcello Mastroianni Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni (26 September 1924Come da lui stesso dichiarato a 1'10" dquesta intervista/ref> – 19 December 1996) was an Italian actor. He is generally regarded as one of Italy's most iconic male performers of the 20t ...

James Coco James Emil Coco (March 21, 1930 – February 25, 1987) was an American stage and screen actor. He was the recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Cable ACE Award and three Obie Awards, as well as nominations for a Tony Award, ...

, Gail Lawrence, and

Geraldine Fitzgerald Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005) was an Irish actress. She received the Daytime Emmy Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. She was a member of the American T ...

. It is about a man who finds a baby chimpanzee in a giant ''

King Kong King Kong, also referred to simply as Kong, is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. The character has since become an international pop culture icon,Erb, Cynthia, 1998, ''Tracking Kin ...

'' prop, and decides to raise it like a son. It was filmed in English and shot in

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

. As this was a French-Italian co-production, French and Italian dubbed versions were made for their respective countries' theatrical releases.

Plot

The film is set in a darkly surreal and

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n version of New York City that is mostly devoid of humans and populated only by rats and a few eccentrics. Lafayette is a young French electrician, living on his own in a basement. He works for Andreas Flaxman, the cynical owner of a waxwork museum. The museum is dedicated to recreating scenes from the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

. He works alongside his friend the sculptor Luigi Nocello. Nocello maintains the varied and often macabre wax displays, such as the

Crucifixion of Jesus The crucifixion of Jesus was the death of Jesus by being crucifixion, nailed to a cross.The instrument of Jesus' crucifixion, instrument of crucifixion is taken to be an upright wooden beam to which was added a transverse wooden beam, thus f ...

and the

Assassination of Julius Caesar Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator, was assassinated on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC by a group of senators during a Roman Senate, Senate session at the Curia of Pompey, located within the Theatre of Pompey in Ancient Rome, Rome. The ...

, which fill the museum. Lafayette also works as a lighting technician for a feminist theatre group. After rehearsal one day, the women in the group discuss their next project, and decide to improvise a piece about rape for their next production, contending that women are just as capable of violence as men are; in the middle of their discussion, they knock Lafayette unconscious with a bottle of Coca-Cola, pin him down, and the attractive Angelica volunteers to rape Lafayette. Beside the

Hudson River The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...

, amidst a construction site of

Battery Park City Battery Park City is a mainly residential planned community and neighborhood on the west side of the southern tip of the island of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by the Hudson River on the west, the Hudson River shoreline on the nor ...

, Lafayette meets Luigi and a band of eccentrics. The group finds an abandoned baby chimpanzee in the palm of a giant

sculpture. Lafayette decides to adopt the chimpanzee. When he brings the chimp with him to the museum, Flaxman warns him that the chimp will rob him of his freedom, if he does not get rid of it. Flaxman is approached by the mysterious Paul Jefferson of the State Foundation for Psychological Research. He convinces the initially resistant Flaxman to transform the face of the sculpture of

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

into the face of

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...

. Angelica, who has become enamored with Lafayette, moves into his sordid flat and shares in the care of the infant chimp. However, when Lafayette does not respond to the news that she is pregnant, she moves out. Alone again, he returns one day to find his baby ape eaten by rats. In total despair and needing human contact, he breaks into the waxwork museum, but is met with hostility by the owner. The two fight, and a fire, presumably caused by faulty wiring, consumes them both. Later, Angelica is seen on the shore. She plays happily with her child.

Cast

as Gerard Lafayette *

as Luigi Nocello *

as Andreas Flaxman *

as Mrs. Toland * Gail Lawrence as Angelica *

Stefania Casini Stefania Casini (born 4 September 1948) is an Italian actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She appeared alongside Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu in Bernardo Bertolucci's ''1900'' (1976) and received two David di Donatello Award ...

as Feminist Actress *

Mimsy Farmer Merle "Mimsy" Farmer (born February 28, 1945) is an American former actress, artist and sculptor. She began her career appearing in several Hollywood studio films, such as '' Spencer's Mountain'' (1963) and '' Bus Riley's Back in Town'' (1965), f ...

as Feminist Actress *

Avon Long Avon Long (June 18, 1910 – February 15, 1984) was an American Broadway actor and singer. Early years Long was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He had typhoid fever when he was 2 years old, and he later said that the disease affected his feet, g ...

as Miko *

Francesca De Sapio Francesca De Sapio (16 August 1945) is an Italian actress and acting coach, best-known as the young Carmela Corleone in ''The Godfather Part II'' (1974). The daughter of an architect, she was born in Rome, Italy. After her father's work took h ...

as Feminist Actress *

Enrico Blasi Enrico Blasi (born February 16, 1972) is an American hockey coach, former player and athletics administrator who currently serves as head coach at the University of St. Thomas. Blasi was previously the head coach for the Miami RedHawks men's i ...

Reception and release

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website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

the film has an approval rating of 60% based on 5 critics, with an average rating of 6.20/10. Jesús Fernández Santos of ''

El País (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...

'' said that "The film's true interest resides, above all, in the effective scenes of dark humor and in the general idea of the script, which is surely Marco Ferreri's most ambitious one to date". On 14 July 2009, the film was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

by Koch Lorber Films, a division of

Entertainment One Lionsgate Canada is a Canadian entertainment company and a subsidiary of Lionsgate Studios. Based in Toronto, the company is primarily involved in the acquisition and production of films and television series. The company began on June 1, 1973 ...

Awards

The film was presented at the official competition of the

1978 Cannes Film Festival The 31st Cannes Film Festival took place from 16 to 30 May 1978. American filmmaker Alan J. Pakula served as jury president for the main competition. Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi won the ''Palme d'Or'', the festival's top prize, for the drama ...

and received the

Grand Prize of the Jury The Grand Prix is an award of the Cannes Film Festival bestowed by the jury of the festival on one of the competing feature films. It is the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d'Or. History The award was first presented ...

, in tie with

Jerzy Skolimowski Jerzy Skolimowski (; born 5 May 1938) is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist, actor and painter. Beginning as a screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda's ''Innocent Sorcerers'' (1960), Skolimowski has made more than twenty films since his dire ...

's ''

The Shout ''The Shout'' is a 1978 British horror film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. It was based on a short story by Robert Graves and adapted for the screen by Skolimowski and Michael Austin. The film was the first to be produced by Jeremy Thomas unde ...

''.

References

External links

* {{KingKong 1978 films 1978 comedy-drama films 1970s monster movies French comedy-drama films Italian comedy-drama films Films about apes Films about mice and rats Films directed by Marco Ferreri Films about orphans Films set in wax museums Films shot in New York (state) Films with screenplays by Gérard Brach Films scored by Philippe Sarde French films set in New York City Italian films set in New York City 1970s dystopian films English-language French films English-language Italian films Films with screenplays by Rafael Azcona Cannes Grand Prix winners 1970s English-language films 1970s Italian films 1970s French films 1978 science fiction films English-language comedy-drama films English-language science fiction horror films