Sophie (Marina Fois) and Vincent (Fabrice Eboue) are a couple for whom the spark has left their marriage, and indeed their business. They run a butcher’s shop in a quiet French town where they are finding customers thinner on the ground than they used to be, and as Vincent takes great pride in his work, this is not helping when it is for so little reward. Also not helping is the sudden arrival of militant vegans who storm into their premises and stage a messy protest, and the pair begin to wonder if there is any future for them, professionally or personally. But soon after, Vincent recognises one of the vegan protestors whose mask he tore off, and decides to take drastic action for revenge...
Initially, Some Like It Rare comes across like an anti-vegan comedy, and hailing from France, not exactly the most vegan-friendly of nations, you may ponder it took quite a while for one to appear in film form. But appearances can be deceptive, as director, star and co-writer Eboue preferred to cast his net a lot wider for his laughs, which were there, make no mistake, this was a very funny movie. What was most surprising was how good-natured it was, with a generous attitude to all except those who are actively obnoxious, sanctimonious or offensively prejudiced: those characters tended to be given very short shrift and it was highly amusing to see them get their comeuppance, no matter that others were basically innocent when they became victims.
The premise was that the meat of vegans was unexpectedly tasty, so when Vincent runs down the militant in his van and kills him, he thinks he can simply dispose of his body parts with the other meat destined for the bin, until a customer mistakes the manflesh for ham, and tries a bite. Soon word is getting around that Sophie and Vincent’s "Iranian ham" is the greatest thing for carnivores since the invention of the bacon sandwich, and demand is growing. Trouble is, the butcher has an issue with forcing the red mist to descend so he can carry out the murders of vegans for food, and must be encouraged by his wife, who taunts him about his lack of sexual prowess until he feels the necessary anger to start making with the meat cleaver (or shotgun) and slaughtering enough of the local herbivores to generate a small fortune.
The fact that the customers - and indeed the central couple - were happy to eat meat because it tasted good to them and never thought to delve into what William S. Burroughs might have called the "naked lunch" moment, where you look at what is on your fork and realise what it is you have been eating, was a bigger joke than the somewhat cartoonish vegans who parade through the movie. The couple's son-in-law is one of them, passively aggressively turning every conversation onto his obsession with animal wellbeing, but their best friends are a couple who run a chain of shops specialising in processed meats, so one side cares too much about the finer details of what makes our food, and the other side couldn't give a shit about the garbage they and their patrons shovel into their mouths. That this was an equal opportunities comedy was admirable, and the jokes were at times laugh out loud funny thanks to some nicely tuned performances by a cast that knew when to lean on caricature and when to make it a shade more realistic. As a horror, aside from the stomach-turning concept it wasn't scary, but it had a neat streak of the macabre nonetheless. It did wrap up abruptly, mind you. Music by Guillaume Roussel.
[Signature Entertainment present Some Like It Rare on Digital Platforms 21st March 2022.]
