Short Film: Le Queloune / The Clown (Canada, 2008)

Hey! Which came first, the chicken or the egg? We stumbled upon this short film while writing our review to the Eli Roth-produced horror film, Clown (2014 / trailer). But that review ain't going online till next month (September), and it's time for our traditional (since January 2009, beginning with Food Fight) Short Film of the Month. So here you go: a short that is being presented before the review that led to it. (The review to Jon Watts' Clown [2014] you can read later.)

 

There's more than one filmmaker named Patrick Boivin out there, but this Bovine (above) is the Bovine born in 1975, "a film-maker from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, [North America]. In addition to directing, he is often involved in the lighting, editing, animation, special effects and even music in his films. He is not related in any way to Patrick Boivin of the YouTube gaming group Super Best Friends Play, who is also from Montreal." (Among other projects, Boivin did the stop motion for Iggy Pop's video to King of the Dogs and Indochine's video to Playboy.)

Though a Canadian short, Le Queloune was shot in Normandy (that's in France, for those of you shaky on your geography) and stars the great French character act Dominique Pinon (of the time capsule Diva [1981 / trailer], the masterpiece Delicatessen [1991 / trailer], the blackly hilarious Alien: Resurrection [1997 / trailer], and much more) as the clown. The clown in the short, oddly enough, is somewhat visually reminiscent of the one that pops up in more than one Jean Rollins film, as it did in La rose de fer (1973 / trailer). 

The basic plot, as given by Gorilla:"The central character is a children's clown stirred from the grave by Coca Cola and Mentos, and if that's not convincing enough premise to view this one, then paperwork and petroleum prices have beaten your inner-child beyond recognition. The mangled clown, played by rubbery-cheeked Domnique Pinon star of Micmacs (2009 / trailer) [...], escapes his coffin, miffed and puzzled with a throat full of decomposing larynx. In his search for a thirst-quenching beverage he enters a house, accidentally murders its proprietor, performs amateur plastic surgery, and sizzles up human flesh in the kitchen, with a few shallots and a sprinkling of black paper. [...]"

Short Film — Patrick Boivin's 

 Le Queloune / The Clown (Canada, 2008): 

We don't know rightly when, but somewhere along the way Le Queloune won Patrick Boivin a $500,000 contract at Open Film's "Get It Made" Short Film Competition to produce a feature-length film. According to Open Film, "Boivin's winning entry was selected from more than 100 other online submissions. In this production, Boivin returns to his roots in horror movies to re-explore the zombie genre and give the zombie what other filmmakers never have: feelings. [...] The film follows a clown through his transition into a zombie in a manner that is as gruesome as it is funny." On the advisory team of Open Film were the actor icons Robert Duval and James Caan, the latter of whom said, "Boivin's work caught Open Film's eye from the start — a wild ride of artistic, cultural and technical mash-ups that keeps viewers engaged and generates a wide array of emotional reactions."

Check out more of Bovin's fun stuff at his YouTube channel here.