ENTERTAINMENT

A stand-up comic is on tour in the miscellaneous dives and dumpy venues of the Mojave Desert. It’s a miserable life, with performances to match. This depressive ghost wanders a lost world, meeting a motley cast of creepy people (including a particularly memorable one played by Michael Cera). In this world in which humanity has fallen between the cracks, the filthy nightmare of an already-dead clown, America watches itself and viewers lose themselves.

By all accounts, this film — an absolutely necessary risk — will be the cinematic oddity of the year. It’s a bit like a Wes Anderson movie through the prism of Louis C.K.’s weirdly depressive show Louie; Cassavetes through the prism of David Lynch’s troubling fever dreams; a road movie as purgatory, last stop before full-on hell. Entertainment is based on actor Gregg Turkington’s shocking character, Neil Hamburger. The film is without question one of the most artistically and morally radical works to come out of American indie cinema. A cynical but spiritually rich comedy that leaves us wondering how and when to laugh, a film that creeps us out and makes us sweat even when we don’t quite know what to feel. In a word, it is destined to become a cult classic for the ages, even more so than the director’s previous film, the deeply transgressive The Comedy. − Julien Fonfrède