meddlecore This is a humorously brilliant little film from renown Japanese director Nagisha Oshima with dialogue which flows between French and English and a storyline all about Zoophilia. Nicely compliments the newly released R-100. They would make a nice double feature together.The film follows a French diplomat who suspects his wife is having an affair, after he finds out she has been secretly renting a second apartment from a private investigator he had hired.When he goes to investigate for himself, he walks in on his wife....naked...in bed with a Chimpanzee.Flabbergasted by the whole thing, he doesn't know what to think.But, out of sheer curiosity, he accepts his wife's kinky fetish...and even asks her to bring Max (the chimp, which is more likely some dude in a chimp costume...or a puppet) to come and live with them and their son.The most awkward and hilarious scene occurs when the couple has friends over for dinner- during which they hear Max screaming. Curious themselves, they ask to meet him. But when they bring him out he pretty much molests his human lover in front of their friends.The film focuses less on the lustful aspects of the human-chimpanzee relationship, though, than it does on the psychological journey which our protagonist is swept through, as he tries to understand his wife's psychological condition...not to mention an attempt to fathom what exactly goes on between them behind closed doors. He needs to know...and it's driving him mad.The entire spectacle is hilarious, and filled with bestial and zoophilic innuendo. Like when Peter's secretary/mistress set's the Queen up to visit a stud farm. At one point, Peter (the husband) hires a prostitute, and pays her to attempt to get Max to have sex with her...so he can watch (although, as it turns out....she wasn't his type...totally mine though!).While hilarious from start to finish, I wouldn't exactly qualify this explicitly as a comedy. It's comedic element is more a result of the truly bizarre nature of the thematic content (from the perspective of general normality, if such a thing exists), than it is from a brazen attempt to make you laugh. The jokes require a bit of reflection, at least.When all is said and done this a truly imaginative and deviant piece of cinema that should be experienced by everyone. It will make you think. It will make you laugh. And it will make you go "WHAT THE F**K!?". What more can you ask for, really? Oshima has nice framing too! 8.5 out for 10.

poikkeus Seen with an audience in a theater, Max Mon Amour can be a surprising and satisfying parable. When a womanizing diplomat (Anthony Higgins) realizes that his wife (Charlotte Rampling) may be having an affair, he's shocked, then disgusted that this lover is in fact a full-grown chimpanzee. At first, it appears that Rampling may be using the simian to exact emotional revenge on his wife; then, it seems that a special kind of love might be in play - which inflames his jealousy to the point of violence. Nagisa Oshima frames the film as an offbeat comedy, but it's hard to ignore ignore its themes, which include the blindness of love, questioning to what degree we're human or animal. To the very last scenes, it's difficult to predict that will happen to the chimp or the strange romance. It's presented almost entirely without music, and filmed in French and English - as if to say the language spoken here is beyond words, speaking the language of the heart. Of particular note is the rendering of the chimp, which is presented so realistically that you almost believe it's real. Charlotte Rampling is enigmatic and sensual as Max's "lover."

netwallah A peculiar love triangle. English ambassador Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) sends a detective to find where his wife Margaret (Charlotte Rampling) goes nearly every day. She has taken a small flat, and he goes there, only to discover that her lover is Max—a chimpanzee. Max comes to live with them, and jealousy complicates matters. It's hard for Peter to accept that Margaret loves both of them. The story is resolved with understanding. As a fable about sex, it remains puzzling, though probably the moral of the story is that people like different things, and if nobody gets hurt, what's the big deal? The plot itself, of course, is absurd, and some of the fringe characters play it for comedy, especially the experts the Jones' friends try to introduce, and the maid Maria (Victoria Abril), who seems to be allergic to Max. But the center of the film is tense, even severe at times. Still, Peter is mostly elegant and bothered in much the same way he'd be bothered by jealousy accompanying the usual sort of affair, and Margaret is smiling and self-possessed and calm. Rampling and Higgins play perfectly in the mode of comedy that has its characters act around a crazy premise as if it were ordinary, and so the film is improbably charming.

laluke I watched this film as a part of a film class that I take. For the first time I really liked a Oshima film as I watched it and not only after we talked about it. The story crosses all kinds of lines of what love is and how it can be felt by anybody or anything. All and all a good film to see. Note that for 1986 Rick Bakers effects are the most life-like I have seen of a monkey. Sometimes you even think it is a the real thing