ONLY the French could have produced this. "Sitcom" is a black farce of fantastic proportions that delights in breaking every taboo in the book in a blase, serial manner. It begins as soap, gets weird and ends up being, well, totally bonkers.

When, one evening, the father of an ordinary middle class family brings back a pet rat from his laboratory, the strangeness begins. Each time someone comes into contact with the rat it sets off a change in their mood. A cloud of distracted intensity spreads over the character's expression; wickednesses and perversions ensue. Nothing is off-limits - group sex, suicide, sado-masochism, incest and worse. While the audience is left to cringe in their seats, the events unfold in an atmosphere of gallic non-chalance. This might be the pattern of life in any normal Parisian suburban home, at least if the characters reactions to events are anything to go by.

The shock value of this comedy of transgression makes the proceedings all very amusing at first, but the impact wears off in the second half of the film. The thoroughly bizarre ending leaves one with a sense that the film had run out of steam and the director was scrambling around for a dramatic way out.

The Fixer