You may have noticed plastered on the side of a bus recently an advertisement for a film entitled “The Megane Experiment”. If the 30mph speed limit beneath a sign reading “Gisburn” didn’t raise your eyebrows, then the terrible review excerpt just might have done. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it read something like “deserves nothing but our hatred” – this accompanied by a half-star rating. That’s 1/10.
Now, in my experience, the only time an advertisement will revel in a bad review will be in such circumstances where they feel as though negativity on the part of the straight press might have the opposite effect on their intended audience. Whilst no amount of “abhorrent, should be banned” reviews will ever make me even consider paying to watch Saw 3D, all the same I found myself intrigued enough to pay a visit to the website as displayed on the poster.
Here the “bad” reviews continue: “Cheap dig”, says Granada TV. “Pathetic,” says Nigel Evans, Tory MP. “Villagers Angered”, reports the Lancashire Telegraph. All very intriguing, I’ll give them that. I must admit, however, that upon spotting the Renault logo in the corner, I couldn’t help but feel more than a little disappointed. This isn’t some controversial new venture on the part of an auteur film-maker at all. Rather, it’s a highly elaborate (and more than a little cynical) marketing campaign for the Renault Megane. The clue is very much in the title – The Megane Experiment. I should have known from the start. The “bad” reviews were little more than a ploy to prick the curiosity of those who would otherwise ignore such advertisements. And, if you take me as a case-in-point, evidently it’s worked supremely well.
So, what’s it all about, then? Directed by one Henry-Alex Rubin who, in 2005 received an Oscar nomination for his Murderball documentary, it follows the exploits of a Frenchman sent by Renault to the village of Gisburn, Lancashire to test a “controversial theory”: Can a car change a town?
“It sounds preposterous,” reads the film’s synopsis. “But statistics had emerged that suggested otherwise. Could a man armed with only a cravat and a Renault Megane really win over an indifferent and sometimes hostile village?”
The “statistics” in question are, at best, questionable. The film opens by claiming that studies have shown that towns with more Meganes tend to have higher fertility rates. Fertility, the film claims, is a sign of happiness, or “joie de vivre”. The implication, obviously, is that towns with more Meganes are generally happier overall. The film claims explicitly that “money can’t buy happiness”. Evidently, though, the presence of Renault Meganes can. Even more dubious are the claims that more Meganes make for more lingerie shops, more days of sunshine per year and more “kisses per hour”.
If viewed as a pretentious and overlong Renault commercial, the film is tedious and depressing. If viewed out of context, however, it comes across as a strange variation on The Secret Millionaire. Claude Menton, the French protagonist who’s made it his mission to bring joy to Gisburn, is, I find, hard not to like. His accent is alluring and he stands out amongst the dreariness of his surroundings as though acting before a blue screen.
What really makes the film at once so amusing and distressing, though, is the sheer small-mindedness of the villagers with whom Claude interacts. Upon proclaiming that French beef is superior to English, someone hurls a cup of tea at him. That, perhaps, he was asking for. But the unbridled xenophobia of some of the residents is more than a little upsetting. “Are you French?” asks a man upon first meeting him with the air of one enquiring into war-crimes. Later: “Do you know why this [bleak English countryside] is better than France? ‘Cause there’re no French here.” Never mind “joie de vivre”, some of these people need a clout ’round the ear.
The film ends with a small festival of joy (the centrepiece of which is, obviously, a Renault Megane) and a cosy closing scene in the pub in which the French national anthem is sung and the local vicar proclaims his new-found joie de vivre with gusto and aplomb. The narrator claims that a “cultural revolution” has been sparked by “one festival and one car”. I can’t help but feel dubious about that. Nor, however, can I help but feel a modicum of pity for poor Claude. Nobody deserves to be exposed to such venomous prejudice.
So. Was the film worthy of the vitriolic hatred it so proudly demonstrated in its advertisements? Not at all. It may be a shallow and cynical marketing ploy, but there are many, many more offensive films and adverts alike currently making the rounds. Do I feel as though tracking it down and watching it was worth my time and effort? To some extent. In as much as it will, in some way, distance me from the narrow-minded and xenophobic Englanders as featured within, it has actually had the effect of making me wish that I owned a Renault Megane. The overall message seems to be that it’s not so much a car for those possessing “joie de vivre” as a car for those whose boundaries stretch beyond the Tesco at the end of the road.
For the latest in Nationwide’s Renault Megane leasing offers, click here.
All of a sudden, the car industry seems to have found a conscience and has become all interested in its ecological responsibilities and environmental protection – uncannily tied in with the astronomical rise in fuel prices and global economic meltdown. Sceptical? Moi?
