Bye Bye Monkey (1978)
1h 53m | PG-13
In metahistorical New York city electrotechnician Lafayette deals with a megalomaniac director of a wax museum of ancient Rome, an italian lonely anarchist, a group of feminist actresses - including Angelica who falls in love with him - and a small adopted chimpanzee.
Director: Marco Ferreri
Studio: Prospectacle
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Video: 720p
Cast
Gérard Depardieu
as Gérard Lafayette
Marcello Mastroianni
as Luigi Nocello
James Coco
as Andreas Flaxman
Abigail Clayton
as Angelica
Geraldine Fitzgerald
as Mrs. Toland
Stefania Casini
as Feminist Actress
Reviews
BYE BYE MONKEY (1978) - Sadly unable to find an American theatrical distributor when initially released, director Marco Ferreri's visual treatise on gender roles and human civilization - while often inscrutable - is kept afloat by sympathetic performances and startling visuals. Gerard Depardieu - who was perhaps the most daring actor working circa the late-'70s - is once again totally uninhibited as a man who finds a baby monkey in the shadow of the World Trade Center and decides to raise it as his own; Marcello Mastroianni has several touching moments as a sexually frustrated misfit who has become disillusioned with America; while James Coco is properly imperious as a wax museum proprietor interested in preserving a certain type of masculinity. Multi-layered and heavily symbolic (and with enough nudity and sex to easily qualify for a 1978 X-rating), this one is for connoisseurs of the offbeat and those who miss the good old days of intellectual arthouse cinema.