Bye Bye Monkey

Lafayette, a young French electrician, lives in a basement apartment in a largely deserted New York City. He works for Andreas Flaxman, the cynical owner of a waxwork museum, and also serves as a lighting technician for a feminist theatre group. The city around him is crowded with rats and eccentrics, setting a surreal tone for his daily life.

After a theatre rehearsal, the women discuss their next project and argue about depicting violence. They knock Lafayette unconscious with a bottle and pin him down, with Angelica volunteering to rape him. The incident marks a brutal intrusion of violence into his already precarious existence.

Beside the Hudson River near Battery Park City, Lafayette meets Luigi Nocello and a group of eccentrics. They discover an abandoned baby chimpanzee cradled in the palm of a giant King Kong sculpture. Lafayette decides to adopt the chimp as a companion in his lonely life.

Flaxman warns Lafayette that keeping the chimp might rob him of his freedom, forcing him to confront the responsibilities of ownership. The warning bites at Lafayette’s sense of autonomy in a city that already feels restrictive. The chimp’s presence becomes a test of whether companionship is worth the cost.

Paul Jefferson of the State Foundation for Psychological Research visits Flaxman and pressures him to alter the face of Julius Caesar into John F. Kennedy. The act signals a disturbing manipulation of history and identity for political and perceptual ends. It foreshadows how authority can shape appearances within the museum’s displays.

Angelica, who has grown fond of Lafayette, moves into his squalid flat and helps care for the infant chimp. A fragile, improvised family forms amidst the museum’s macabre world. The chimp becomes a shared focal point that tempers their loneliness.

Angelica learns she is pregnant, but Lafayette's inability to respond leads her to move out. The separation deepens Lafayette’s isolation and intensifies his reliance on the chimp for human connection. The couple's fragile bond fractures under the strain of their environment.

When Lafayette returns home, he discovers that his infant chimpanzee has been eaten by rats. The loss devastates him and leaves him craving real human contact even more. The tragedy underscores the city’s brutality and the fragility of nonhuman companionship.

In a state of despair, Lafayette breaks into the waxwork museum seeking solace and human contact, only to be met with hostility from Flaxman. They fight, and a fire—likely caused by faulty wiring—consumes the building and destroys much of what they both held dear. The ruin marks the collapse of their worlds and illusions.

The film closes with Angelica seen on the shore, happily playing with her child. It offers a fragile note of hope amid the ruin, suggesting a future for the next generation despite the city’s decay. The image juxtaposes tenderness with the wreckage of the earlier events.

The Caesar sculpture bearing JFK’s face embodies how authority reshapes identity within the museum’s world. The transformation becomes a quiet commentary on control over appearances and personal narratives. It lingers as a motif of how history is manufactured.

Despite the ruin around them, the film hints at renewal through the image of Angelica and her child. The final moments suggest that humanity can endure and adapt even when the city and its institutions have failed. It leaves a cautious, hopeful impression rather than outright triumph.