Jacky in the Kingdom of Women

Skewering discriminatory notions is the plain aim of Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (Jacky au royaume des filles), an inverted Cinderella story gleefully playing with gender norms and imbalanced power structures. A female-led, horse-worshipping dictatorial society relegates men to the status of robe-clad domestic servants and sexual conquests, parallels with the inequitable treatment of women and the inflexibility of ideology easy to discern; however it takes more than turning real-life scenarios on their head with exaggerated absurdist lashings to make an intelligent farce or an insightful satire.

The titular Jacky (Vincent Lacoste, Camille Rewinds) may live in a realm controlled by the fairer sex, but the film he inhabits is one of men without a doubt. In graphic artist turned filmmaker Riad Sattouf’s second feature after The French Kissers, as based on a story in his acclaimed series Pascal Brutal, the conversions and counter-equivalences are of the most simplistic and superficial in nature. In a fictitious nation obviously based on several Middle Eastern countries with a dash of North Korea thrown in, women act like crudely drawn outlines of men, with just-as-undeveloped stereotypical traits added. They bellow, leer and enforce their authority, yet can only talk to each other about males. It is the subjugated, not the reclaimed authority, that earns the film’s focus and sympathies.

Jacky is keenly sought after in his rural community, showered with marriage proposals but dreaming of marrying the Colonelle (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nymphomaniac), the heir to the leadership of the Popular and Democratic Republic of Bubunne. When his mother dies, his hopes of going to the grand ball at which the Colonelle’s husband – or the Big Dummy, as is the position’s official title – is to be chosen are dashed in favour of his obnoxious cousins attending instead. With the help of his revolutionary-leaning uncle (Michel Hazanavicius, Oscar-winning director of The Artist), he endeavours to persevere, militaristic and fundamentalist regime in the name of passion.

To give credit where it is due, Sattouf throws all he can into the world he has created, as one-note as it proves to be. Every visual manifestation he can manage reinforces the switch of sides, be it women in uniform forcing themselves on young men, or men scrubbing, serving, and devouring soap operas. Subtlety is absent in the approach in favour of the obvious, and even through intricacy shows in aesthetic details such as the form-hiding garments with leashes, and in dialogue that toys with French linguistic conventions, everything is executed with the broadest of strokes. The idea is sound, but doesn’t develop past its initial sketching, nor does the execution. More comic appropriations are inserted into the narrative as it progresses, including what could have been a smart assertion about media and reality television, yet exist as a mere aside to the main ‘women on top’ thrust.

A spirited cast of familiar French faces goes along willingly with the sardonic silliness, the likes of Noémie Lvovsky (Farewell, My Queen), and Valérie Bonneton (The Volcano) among them, but like much of the film they’re relegated to padding surrounding the primary gender-bending bent. Of course Jacky in the Kingdom of Women smacks of the cartoonish given Sattouf’s background, and Lacoste and Gainsbourg perfect the goofy tenor of their parts and the feature as a whole, yet the entire product always feels lacking. Minor moments of amusement in a blatant construct of rudimentary role reversal can’t assuage a film that strives but languishes to make an actual statement. The concept may be a killer in all its interesting intent, but the film that results is little more than filler.