Of Snails And Men

Set against the backdrop of Michael Jackson's swift visit to Budapest in 1992, Of Snails And Men is an entertaining workforce comedy with more than a little sex-comedy and the working-class struggle of The Full Monty thrown into the mix.

A French company is buying a Romanian town's metal-working factory, and (at least) temporarily, the entire workforce is out of work. The company director is a particularly lecherous, ignorant so-and-so. He announces the buy-out to a hostile unionised crowd.

Gica is the union leader and a rough-with-the-smooth modern Lothario. The first time we see him, he's screwing the company's secretary on the roof of the factory. He gets wind of the plans to lay off all but 300 workers, and suggests a worker buy-out to foil the privatisation plans. But what can they produce to raise the necessary funds? Quite by chance, he sees an advert for a US-owned family planning clinic looking for raw materials. Some back of the envelope calculations later, Gica reckons he can mobilise the mostly male workforce to make enough *cough* deposits to save the factory.

Mostly, Of Snails And Men is a light, entertaining comedy. There are some entertaining culture and language-based laughs, a gooey splodge of love story and warmed-over relationship drama. The script is mostly perfunctory, but the supporting cast and performances do much to save it. The underlying critique of the moral limits of free-markets can be devastating. Some hilarious and lascivious double-entendres (which I will not reveal) survive the subtitles. I mostly managed to write this without making equally filthy puns about taking the means of production back into the hands of the workers.