56
2
240 * 321
12/06/2004
17+
“How to stay normal”? Or perhaps it would be better to ask, “How can we be normal in the first place?” That’s the question which Junior — a young man born to inherit billions — is asking himself as the story opens. His father is an odious hypocrite, a businessman who’s always trailing a call girl or three behind him. His mother, Nevrosa, a call girl gone to seed, now has eyes only for her gigolos and never assigns blame for anything (that only gives you wrinkles). His sister, an international “club kid,” is probably a lesbian and most definitely anorexic. This family have already been everywhere and done everything. But they continue to seek new sensations. The most extreme, the most perverse, the most deadly… And Junior is going to provide them with everything they’ve ever dreamed of.
Because they can’t all find the time to meet at their Swiss chateau in December, the enigmatic Junior organizes a Christmas dinner for the family at the end of September. The party is in full swing, and everything is — err — normal. Champagne and cocaine run like rivers, Daft Punk is playing a special exclusive show in the chateau’s private park, the sons of sheiks gyrate with high-class hookers. Everyone’s awash in hedonism and lust — the usual party atmosphere. At least, assuming all this isn’t starting to lead up toward an unexpected climax, the blackest kind of tragedy… But only Junior, with his Machiavellian smile, can know that for sure.
In order to draw himself — and us — into the numbing “normality” of these alarming creatures, Philippe Bertrand has returned to the aesthetic style he knows so well.