Evaluation: Bawdy comedy and politics do not mix in ‘Nobody’s Hero’

French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie, who in 2013 shipped the steamy, slow burn of an erotic homosexual thriller that was “Stranger by the Lake,” goes off in a entirely distinctive route with his most up-to-date hard work, “Nobody’s Hero.”

Actually, make that two absolutely unique instructions.

In equal measure a bawdy comedy about an regular Joe who has an obsessive affair with a married, middle-aged sex worker as nicely as a sardonic socio-political portrait of a homeless youthful Muslim person who may well or could not be a jihadist terrorist, the ambitious twofer never ever manages to uncover a workable tone efficiently bridging farce and satire.

At the center of equally halves of the thorny equation is Mederic (Jean-Charles Clichet), a single, balding, perpetually-vaping 35-calendar year-previous pc programmer who wishes to avail himself of the sexual companies of Isadora (a wonderful Noémie Lvovsky), the older prostitute he’s been stalking, albeit with a hitch.

Declaring himself to be anti-prostitution, Mederic needs for the hook-up to be free of cost, despite the fact that he does guarantee her that he’ll cater to her requires.

Astonishingly, Isadora normally takes him up on his give, provided that she can make it dwelling in time to greet her possessive, abusive partner, Gerard (Renaud Rutten), and she sets up a rendezvous at the quaintly shabby Lodge de France in the town of Clermont-Ferrand.

But through their comically graphic experience, her moans of pleasure are interrupted by a fatal terrorist attack right close to the corner at an outside plaza.

Unfulfilled, Mederic returns to his apartment when he’s approached by Selim, a youthful, vast-eyed panhandler (newcomer Ilies Kadri) seeking for shelter.

Mederic in the long run normally takes him in, at initial quickly, even as he and his fellow neighbors even now suspect the Muslim could very perfectly be a single of the attack’s elusive perpetrators.

Guiraudie, who penned the script along with Laurent Lunetta, clearly has a great deal on his plate as his dueling situations ping-pong urgently amongst the forces of desire and paranoia just before coming to an intersection of kinds, with the many players concerned all congregating, Oscar Wilde-style, in the middle of Mederic’s condominium.

Any effort that manages to include pointed observations about Islamophobia, everyday xenophobia, woman objectification and sexual hypocrisy, at the identical time doing the job in a loud make-out session in a cathedral confessional definitely just can’t be accused of slacking, no matter how kooky or wearisome points develop into.

But while there’s no shortage of aged-college inspiration to be taken from movies this kind of as Bunuel’s “The Discreet Appeal of the Bourgeoisie” and “Diary of a Chambermaid” — minus the surrealistic bits — the double narratives at play below, just about every of which could have created for a respectable standalone movie, are unable to uncover a unifying pitch.

Whilst the ending supplies a trace of a way ahead for the solid of legitimate characters, the thematic absolutely free-for-all that is “Nobody’s Hero” does none of them any lasting favors.