Kaufman’s hilarious tale, directed by French music-video auteur Michel Gondry, charts the intersecting lives of three very curious characters: Lila (Patricia Arquette), a nature writer with a rare, extreme-body-hair disorder; her husband, Nathan (Tim Robbins), a stuffy behaviorist who teaches etiquette to lab rats, and Puff (Rhys Ifans), a man raised in the wild as a monkey. After finding Puff during a hike, the couple decides to teach him how to be human. For Nathan, “being human” means using the proper fork. Puff, however, learns a different lesson when he spies Nathan having sex with his French assistant (Miranda Otto) rather than his wife, who shaves tip to toe to hide her condition. Being human, it turns out, is all about sex. Or lying about it, anyway.
Gondry’s low-key direction is full of subtle sight gags, like the slow evolution of Puff’s cage from a dirty hovel to a cultivated English den. Kaufman’s new script isn’t as inspired as “Malkovich.” It’s a precious little concoction–the B-plus work of a madcap genius. But that’s more than enough to make every future Charlie Kaufman movie a must-see.
Human Nature
