Death is certain - but the speciality business at the centre of The Suicide Shop takes mortality to the next level.
By supplying an eclectic collection of equipment which guarantees their customers a successful suicide, the shop owners take great pride in their inventory and promise to reimburse every failed attempt. As they smugly proclaim, nobody ever comes back for a refund.
The first animated film by French director Patrice Leconte (Monsieur Hire, Girl on the Bridge), The Suicide Shop is a musical adaptation of writer-cartoonist Jean Teulé's novel, a tongue-in-cheek, macabre tale of lives drained of meaning and happiness.
It postulates a miserable world in which the sky is always grey and the people are either walking into traffic or falling from high places. As suicide in public places has been outlawed, even their bodies are ticketed.
Amid this gloominess is a back-alley family store that has been serving the community and singlehandedly raising its suicide success rate since 1854. Mishima and Lucrèce Tuvache (voiced by Bernard Alane and Isabelle Spade) raise their children, Marilyn and Vincent, to believe in the pointlessness of life and their inherent worthlessness - even if they're expressly forbidden to do themselves in. After all, there is a business to maintain.