Louise-Michel is a 2008 French Black Comedy film directed and written by Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine.
A French textile factory's CEO fires his (all female) staff of workers and moves the factory's machines to Romania without telling them. One of the older workers, Louise (Yolande Moreau), suggests to find and kill the CEO. To do so, she hires Michel (Bouli Lanners), a professional killer and security agent. Michel turns out not to be as good at his job as he initially pretended.
The cast also includes Benoît Poelvoorde, Albert Dupontel and Mathieu Kassovitz in supporting roles.
Louise-Michel provides examples of the following tropes:
- Book Dumb: Louise is illiterate, to the point a neighboring little boy from her building helps her with homeworks.
- Boom, Headshot!: A debt collector comes to see one of the workers, presents her papers about her debt, and she pretends to go seek her glasses. She comes back unnoticed by him with a hunting shotgun and blows his head off with it.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Guy (Benoît Poelvoorde) is a rather eccentric dude who has no better idea than recreating 9/11 with big models.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: From one day to the next, the factory's CEO announces to his workers that they're basically fired, poorly embellishing his words to make it sound like it's not too big of a deal. Then the next day, unbeknownst to the workers, he has all the factory's machinery moved to Romania (where there are cheaper workers).
- Crazy-Prepared: Due to his job, Michel never uses cellphones, never uses phone booths more than 30 seconds, lives in a trailer and has a weaponsmith friend build him copies of old guns (buying guns or using factory-made guns exposes one to the risk of being found through registration).
- Firing Day: From one day to the next, the whole staff of the factory find themselves jobless with their machinery gone to Romania.
- One Hit Poly Kill: Michel inadvertently shoots two cows that stood behind his practice target.
- Poverty Food: Louise is reduced to using mouse traps on her apartment's balcony to kill pigeons. She then plucks them and cooks them for dinner.
- Professional Killer: Michel's job, or at least that's how he advertises it.
- Pun-Based Title: "Louise-Michel" is both the names of the two protagonists and a reference to the name of an important figure of anarchism and socialism in France, Louise Michel
, which is topical with the film's subject (a workforce being screwed by their boss). - Wall of Weapons: Michel has an entire wall in his trailer on which he puts all his guns.
- Who Shot JFK?: Apparently, Michel pretended to Louise that he shot John F. Kennedy, among other improbable things he told her.
