I admit that it was the director's name that made me choose this film from the selection of international films offered by Qantas in their on-board entertainment system on my flight home.
The initial sequence of illegal immigrants on a boat was haunting as they ripped their identification cards and threw them into the water. As authorities came to arrest them, we meet Elias who dove into the sea to escape. He was washed ashore on a nudist beach resort. And from then you know that things would turn for the ludicrous.
It is a cat and mouse game as Elias tries to find his was to Paris to search for a magician who told him to look for him there. On that flimsy premise, the movie became a road trip where Elias encounters and interacts with people who had various problems. Elias was always just the witness of events, but we never find out anything about his past. We do not even know from which country he came from! I kept on watching the film because I wanted to see how Elias would finally fare when he reaches Paris. However when he does meet the magician in Paris, the expected grand finale of Elias' exodus was nowhere to be seen. The crazy visual gimmick that Costa Gavras did on the Eiffel Tower in the ending even made the whole movie look stupid.
