Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 25 Nov @ 8:45pm

Olivier Babinet, Fred Kihn / France/Norway/Belgium/Poland / 2010 / 91 mins

This quirky offbeat road movie has been compared to the work of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki – and whilst it doesn’t quite live up to those comparisons it’s still an enjoyable and suitably bizarre cross cultural journey. Underperforming actor Franky (Pablo Nicomedes), a young man with an obsession about America and its movies and his down at heel manager Arsene (Olivier Gourmet), who runs his business from a laundrette, set off in a stolen car through Poland onto Norway. Attending the Polar Circle Film Festival, the plan is to get Franky an audition with the legendary director Sarrineff, picking up a runaway Rockabilly musician (Bakary Sangare) along the way.

From sneaking over borders to filming show reels at gunpoint and meeting up with a glamorous, older sales rep with a taste for bandits (Danuta Stenka) this movie has that joyful fragmentary quality that fuels the best road movies. And directors Olivier Babinet and Fred Kihn handle the changes in tone from oddball comedy to melancholia with aplomb. With a standout performance from Gourmet as the desperate and disintegrating Arsene and a fine supporting cast, while this is perhaps not in the first order of left field quests, it’s still a fine addition to the genre.