If you’ve ever dreamed of seeing Woody Harrelson get so full of food his stomach explodes onto a startled Kristen Stewart, you’re going to want to see this.
I know it’s wrong to start a review with a spoiler, but this might be one of the most straightforward elements of this film. From the director Quentin Depieux, whose popular film Rubber revolves around a telepathic killer tire, you can understand why this family drama is downright absurd. It follows Phillip Doom (Harrelson) a rich business man trying to bond with his daughter Madeleine (Stewart) on a trip to Paris. When a hotel concierge Lucie (played by Charlotte Le Bon) wrongfully suspects him of abusing his adult daughter, she tags along to observe their antics for Madeleine’s protection. Amid the Paris protests and lavish hotels and restaurants, Madeleine won’t stop eating and arguing with her father. Lucie, the hotel concierge tries to manage her growing feelings for Madeleine. (Who ultimately rejects her, as she’s straight). As Madeleine and Phil spend their night in Paris, trying in vain to fix their relationship, it becomes clear all the food she eats goes to his stomach rather than hers. He grotesquely balloons up as their relationship worsens. Hence the later explosion.
The story runs parallel to the story of a 1950s horror film Madeleine insists on watching, where a lake monster eats the heads of the scientists who kill it and resurrect it. She watches this film in their shared hotel room throughout the story. Whenever she watches the film in their suite, this 1950s black and white horror film unfolds onscreen as if we’re inside the movie she’s watching. The scientists meet a bloody end at the hands of the creature they created. Both tales are obtuse, off beat and comedic, albeit a little violent. However, the violence never feels scary; it’s clearly metaphorical.
It’s about someone being destroyed by the life they created and then neglected. In the horror movie, that’s the lake monster and the scientists. And it’s also Phil and Madeleine.
The absurdity of this film helps the subject matter immensely. While it’s not my choice subject matter to watch, I can appreciate a great family drama film done well. There’s plenty of family dramas I love. However, poorly done family dramas can be some of the most boring films on the planet. If I wanted to watch a tired family who have a love-hate relationship argue, I could just eavesdrop in a Disneyland gift shop near closing time. I don’t need to watch 2 hours of regular people arguing. The family drama to me has a burden of proof: it needs to be unique to stand out from all the family dramas that came before it. Full Phil hits the spot.
The family drama is wholly dependent on character. While the characters in Full Phil are relatively one-note, their dynamic is beautifully and comedically simple. Madeleine can’t acknowledge how much her lack of forgiveness hurts her father and he can’t acknowledge that he might not have been a perfect dad. This serves as an engine for their whole adventure and it plays out in a series of highly specific, punchy conversations, punctuated by Phil’s growing stomach. The 1950s movie interjections provide some levity and break up the film into almost chapter-like segments.
While Phil starts as an antagonistic force, he loses everything at the end due to his inability to see his own flaws. The film doesn’t preach the message of “forgive your parents against all odds”. It just acknowledges the two way street of estrangement. It speaks on how estrangement is mainly the fault of the antagonistic parent who caused psychological damage to their child, while acknowledging that estrangement also hinges on the child’s willingness to forgive in adulthood.
The message would be more complicated if Phil was an abusive parent, but he’s relatively harmless and established as such in the story. Madeleine isn’t scared of him in the slightest, taking joy in teasing and taunting him. He’s insufferable enough that Madeline’s teasing feels justified and their estrangement feels believable. Their estrangement is purely on emotional terms, with no criminal or abusive strings attached. The movie feels like reading a bizarre short novel and sports an incredibly short run time of seventy eight minutes.
While this film had a lot of intrigue for me, the absurdity at times went too far for the film to resonate emotionally. This might be my only complaint about the movie. When a film is a bit bizarre, the underlying feelings communicated need to be so universal and relatable that it shines through all the absurdity. I didn’t ever feel that emotionally moved by the film. Sure, I laughed. It was funny. I was really entertained. But I think the film lost a sort of catharsis underneath all the bizarro elements I loved so much.
One thing I can commend the film for is the use of meta elements for comedic effect. For example, Kristen Stewart is famously queer and the movie seemingly references our preconceived knowledge of her queerness. She came out on SNL and starred in the sapphic A24 epic Love Lies Bleeding. The choice to make her character verbalize being explicitly straight is referential. Lucie assumes she is queer when she asks her out, and Lucie is a stand in for the audience. Oftentimes people expect certain actors to play queer roles if they’ve done so in the past, and I expected Stewart’s character to get with Le Bon’s character in the film. The film calls you out on your own expectations in a subtle way, which I think is really fun. Another meta moment I loved is the moment when Madeleine is watching the schlocky 1950s horror film, full of non-scary, amusing pulp. She says something along the lines of “why don’t they make movies like this anymore?”
They still make weird, fun movies like that. Full Phil is a movie like that. That’s why this comment feels so wonderfully meta to me. Madeleine is describing the desire to watch a movie like Full Phil in Full Phil.
And Madeleine is right. Full Phil is super weird and fun, which isn’t something easy to come by. It doesn’t try to be anything it’s not. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. When you go to the movie theater as religiously as I like to, weird and fun is always winsome. And, it helps if you explode Woody Harrelson. Nothing against the guy, but that’s just extra points in my book.