An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (unrated)

This is the 14th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I've made the unusual decision not to rate this film. I really don't know if it's a good film or a bad film. It overwhelmed me. When the film ended the audience broke out into loud applause, probably the biggest applause of the festival so far, but I just sat there in a daze. What had I just watched?

The plot itself is easy to describe. Shane Danger (Emile Hirsch) is the manager of a small cafe. He's told by the area manager that he has to reduce the staff, so he fires his wife Lulu. Lulu taunts her husband by telling him that her brother Adjay's vegan convenience store earns more money. Shane and his two remaining employees rob the store. Adjay hires a hitman called Colin to get the money back, but Lulu suggests that Colin should split the money with her, so they run away together.

Colin falls in love with Lulu, not realising that she's only using him. They stay in a hotel which is planning to host an event with a man called Beverly Luff Linn. Lulu recognises him as her ex-husband who she thought was dead. He was thought to have drowned when they were swimming off the coast of Aberdeen, but he had a spiritual enlightenment while he was swimming and decided to fake his death and return as a Scotsman.

The plot might sound straightforward, but the film is stylistically chaotic. There's an absurd humour created by repeating the same unfunny jokes over and over again until they finally become funny. A reviewer has described the film as a cross between the Three Stooges and David Lynch. That aptly sums it up.