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Robert Mitchum is Dead

Franky Pastor is a down-and-out French actor with a dependency on sleeping pills. His greatest talent is his ability to lip-synch to Robert Mitchum’s voice in old movies. Franky’s manager is a huckster named Arsène who’s into old-school cars and music on tape. Arsène hatches a plan to introduce Franky to Mr. Sarrineff, the elderly director of a Robert Mitchum movie who is scheduled to attend a film festival in the Arctic Circle. Arsène steals a car to match his three-piece suit and they leave France for points north with a mysterious rockabilly musician stowed away in their trunk. They stop at the Lodz television school in Poland where Arsène gets the students to make a film starring Franky. A supportive pharmaceutical saleswoman smuggles them across the Baltic Sea to Sweden in her Mercedes. When Franky and Arsène, plus Douglas the hulking musician, finally get to the Polaris film festival, they find it taking place in a big black tent. Will Sarrineff help them realize the dream they’ve brought north? ROBERT MITCHUM IS DEAD is a long, strange trip featuring the terrifically bizarre Bakary Sangaré of the Comedie Française. (In French with subtitles) –B.B.