Parpaillon (Up and Down)

A loving, slapstick sendup of the French passion for cycling that doubles as an ode to 19th century French symbolist poet Alfred Jarry, Luc Moullet’s Parpaillon (Up and Down) may be the most French thing ever. A mountain road rally up the Parpaillon pass in the French Alps is the simple line on which Moullet hangs a series of gags broad and obscure (depending how versed you are, for example, in the inner tube vs. clincher debate) that have the cumulative effect of slow-release laughing gas. -UCLA (Luc Moullet, France, 1992, 93 min.) In French with English subtitles