Bye Bye Monkey

4/2/2020

BYE BYE MONKEY (1978) - Sadly unable to find an American theatrical distributor when initially released, director Marco Ferreri's visual treatise on gender roles and human civilization - while often inscrutable - is kept afloat by sympathetic performances and startling visuals. Gerard Depardieu - who was perhaps the most daring actor working circa the late-'70s - is once again totally uninhibited as a man who finds a baby monkey in the shadow of the World Trade Center and decides to raise it as his own; Marcello Mastroianni has several touching moments as a sexually frustrated misfit who has become disillusioned with America; while James Coco is properly imperious as a wax museum proprietor interested in preserving a certain type of masculinity. Multi-layered and heavily symbolic (and with