How soon is too soon to laugh about, or with, a global pandemic that has caused more than five million deaths worldwide and devastated many million more lives and economies? There is no correct answer to this question.
A bunch of hardy filmmakers have attempted, successfully, to laugh about Covid-19, but with a necessary undercurrent of seriousness and poignancy. Recently, I was rather surprised when a friend of mine professed ignorance about the oeuvre of French comic actor and filmmaker, Dany Boon. Though Boon had been around for a while, I first became aware of him when I watched Patrice Leconte’s My Best Friend (2006), where a friendless businessman (Daniel Auteuil) hires a charming taxi driver (Boon) to teach him the meaning of friendship.
Boon directed and starred in his global breakthrough film, Welcome to the Sticks (2008), where he plays the local yokel to Kad Merad’s civil servant who is sent on a punishment posting from sunny Provence to the far North of France. Since then Boon has been on a roll and his latest, also directed by and starring him, is pandemic comedy Stuck Together (2021), which is streaming on Netflix. The film is set in a block of Paris flats during lockdown and follows a bunch of quirky residents. Boon plays the ultimate Covid paranoiac who bounces off against his fellow block denizens, including superstar Yvan Attal playing against type as a mad scientist. After being as irreverent as can be about the virus, the film turns sentimental for its finale and leaves you with a lump in your throat.
Over on Amazon, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has a terrific twist in the tale pertaining to the virus, so let’s just park that there and not spoil it for you in case you haven’t seen it yet. Back on Netflix, Bo Burnham’s Inside is perhaps the ultimate lockdown performance. Shot entirely in his apartment, Burnham writes, edits, directs, sings and provides his views on everything under the sun. It is funny, it is sad, and there is a real sense of claustrophobia, especially now that our movements are relatively free.
However, the film that is the ultimate send-up of Covid-19 is Stop and Go , written by Whitney Call and Mallory Everton, and directed by Everton and Stephen Meek. Call and Everton play a pair of clueless sisters who embark on a road trip across the US to rescue their grandmother from a Covid outbreak in her care home. En route, they encounter the myriad ways in which America has dealt with the pandemic, or not, which are funny and terrifying simultaneously.
As you read this, the fresh horror that is the new Omicron variant of the virus is spreading rapidly around the world. If we are locked indoors again, might as well get a laugh out of it, right?
Naman Ramachandran is a journalist and author of Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography , and tweets @namanrs
