"Bye Bye Monkey" starts with Lafayette(Gerard Depardieu) waking to a New York City being fumigated for rats. That's not all as he also has trouble selling fake leopard skin to Flaxman(James Coco) for his wax museum. Lafayette becomes a guinea pig for the women's theatre group where he works the lights to determine
whether a man can be raped. Angelica(Gail Lawrence) demonstrates in the affirmative. At first incensed, he calms down enough to inspect King Kong's carcass where Luigi(Marcello Mastroianni) finds a baby monkey which he gives to Lafayette for safe keeping because of his allergies.
I guess if one were so inclined, one could think of "Bye Bye Monkey" as a quasi-unofficial sequel to the 1976 remake, especially considering the body of the beast in the shadows of the World Trade Center.(I'd also work a Dave Kingman reference in here but he was on the Cubs in 1978. Darn it.) What is really important about "Bye Bye Monkey," a provocative and affectionate black comedy, is that it is about the little people on the ground going about their lives as tumultous events happen above them, most of whom like King Kong are from far-off lands. It is the rats who are native to New York and will be here long after we are all gone. In this topsy-turvy world, Lafayette occasionally takes on animal characteristics and, as Angelica points out, is more of a mother than a father to the baby monkey.
May 11, 2011
