This 2001 comedy features cast of quirky characaters engaged in strange and unlikely pursuits, yielding a movie that could be truly profound, but might be just plain nonsense.
The extremely hirsute Lila Jute (Patricia Arquette) escapes from a society which condemns her copious body hair to a cabin in the woods. She supports herself writing books and lives happily free from human contact until, after some years, she becomes unbearably horny. She returns to the city, begins an aggressive hair removal campaign, and falls in love with Dr. Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins), a scientist who is teaching mice table manners, beginning with the proper use of forks. On a hike in the woods one day, this unlikely couple meet a wild man (Rhys Ifans), whose father, fancying himself an ape, had fled with his son to live a life in the state of nature; after his father died, the ape-man lived happily on, unaware until this chance meeting that he is human.
Lila is thrilled by the ape-man's innocent naturalness, but Nathan sees him as the logical culmination of his life's work: a wild man he can civilize! So they take him back to Bronfman's office, put him in a plastic box with a diaper and an electric shock-delivering collar, and begin his reprogramming. Add in to the mix Gabrielle (Miranda Otto) as Bronfman's sexy assistant who names the wild man "Puff" after a "little doggy" she had as a child and seems intent on seducing every man she sees.
Much of the oddness is explained if you know that this movie was written by Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation") and directed by his frequent accomplice Michael Gondry (the two collaborated on "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"). It's a wild but interesting movie, recommended for those with a sense of humour and a tolerance for the ambiguous and bizarre.