Secret des Banquises, Le

• France / Belgium • 2016 • 81m •

• Directed by: Marie Madinier. • Starring: Charlotte Le Bon, Guillaume Canet, Anne Le Ny, Patrick d'Assumçao, Damien Chapelle, Xavier Beauvois, Eveline Lutz, Béatrice Bonnaudeau, Alain Buron, Alain Drouet, Méranh Karounna Gobert, Didier Leferd, Andréa Malvezzi. • Music by: Stephen Warbeck.

Silently and hopelessly in love with brilliant and egotistical Professor Quignard, the shy Christophine has been pursuing her PhD at his research lab for eight years. Now, the professor and his team are on the verge of making a discovery that will rock the world of science and medicine: the key to universal immunity through 'ppm', a miracle penguin protein.

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Image from: Secret des Banquises, Le (2016)

The film starts with the arrival of a mysterious box (via UPS) at a French research establishment. It's opened to reveal a baby penguin - except that after a few seconds it's clear that it's actually animatronic. To enjoy this film properly, you will have to be able to ignore this and a few other fairly low budget special effects together with some pretty unlikely science and a general disregard for the rules around animal experimentation.

The new penguin is being used, it turns out, to harvest something call PPM which confers remarkable immunity to the birds. It's the dream of the institute's much revered founder to carry this immunity across, first to mice, and then to humans. His besotted lab assistant, Christophine, played by Charlotte Le Bon is there to help him in any way she possibly can.

All that's needed now is the suspicion that the PPM needs to be "activated" by vigorous one-on-one coupling, and the stage is set for some serious action very much reminiscent of the old school British Carry On comedies. Laboratory mice, unaccountably unwilling to test out activating the PPM, are encouraged using "the hormone" which is sprayed liberally around the institute from what look like deodorant cans - with the inevitable results...

The repressed Professor Quignard, head of the institute, is played by Guillaume Canet, generally playing it pretty straight. But this is the part that would have been taken by Kenneth Williams. It's hard not to imagine him hamming it up as he would have done, in his own particular way.

In some parts, though, this film is naturalistic, the acting is good and there is a little depth to some of the characters. It's a bit more than just a Carry On in French.

Review by richard-fieldhouse from the Internet Movie Database.

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