HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE FRENCHMAN

In 16th century Brazil rival French and Portuguese settlers are utilizing the indigenous people as allies in their struggle to establish control. The Tupinambás, who live in the Guanabara Bay area, are allied with the French, while the Tupiniquins are allied with the Portuguese.

A Frenchman who has been captured by the Portuguese is then captured by the Tupinambás after they attack and kill a group of Portuguese. He tries to convince his captors by speaking in French (reciting the poem by Étienne Jodelle found in André Thévet's Singularities of France Antarctique) but the Tupinambás do not believe that the Frenchman was a prisoner of the Portuguese they have killed, and the chief thinks he is Portuguese because "No Frenchman would shoot at the Tupinambá." The tribe's shaman predicted they would find a strong Portuguese man to cannibalize as revenge for the chief's brother being killed by a Portuguese musket ball. Now they have one.

However, the Frenchman is allowed free run of the village area, is eventually provided with a "wife," and adopts traditional Tupinambá nudity in place of his Western clothes.

A French tradesman comes to the village and tells the Tupinambás that their prisoner is indeed Portuguese – he then promises the outraged Frenchman that he will tell the Tupinambás the truth if the Frenchman finds a hidden treasure that another European has hidden in the area. He also instructs him to collect wood, and pepper for him on his return.

The Frenchman gathers cannon powder from the abandoned Portuguese cannons, and brings it to the Tupinambás, who use it to defeat the rival Tupiniquins in battle.

The relationship between the Frenchman and his Tupinambá "wife" remains enigmatic. It is unclear for most of the movie if she intends to save him from the group that wants to eat him, or if she has been assigned to win his trust and prevent him from escaping. The Frenchman appears to become in love with her but eventually decides to try to leave. She keeps him from escaping by swamping his canoe and then shooting him in the leg with an arrow. He is then taken to meet his fate of being ritually killed and eaten.

In the last seconds of his life, the Frenchman refuses to play along with the ceremonial script that the Tupinambás expect him to follow and instead angrily (and loudly) tells the Tupinambás that his death will not revitalize them (as his death and the subsequent cannibal feast is intended to do) but rather will doom them all to extermination.

The movie ends with a postscript that reveals the rival Tupiniquim were later exterminated by their supposed allies, the Portuguese.

The Frenchman is eventually captured, ritually killed, and eaten by the Tupinambás after his failed escape attempt. The film ends with his defiant outburst and a postscript revealing the later extermination of the Tupiniquim by the Portuguese.

The ending underscores the irony and futility of both colonial and tribal violence: rather than revitalizing the tribe, the cannibal feast marks another cycle of doomed retribution, while the historical postscript comments on the ultimate betrayal and destruction wrought by colonial powers. The Frenchman's refusal to participate in the ritual’s script serves as a final rejection of all sides' illusions, linking individual tragedy to broader historical cycles.