LE BONHEUR (1965)
A young carpenter is living happily with his wife and family, until he meets a young clerk in the local post office...
When Googling Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur / Happiness, the two primary categories given for the film are romance and horror. This isn’t an altogether strange mix in film, though the dual approach to these two genres goes beyond being merely atypical in this particular case, which features an ironic storybook fantasy that paints casual chauvinism in evocative colours and fetching garments. The moral rot at the heart of this story isn’t conveyed through omission, necessarily, but can instead be found bursting out of a story that uses its faux romantic tale to craft one of cinema’s most unique nightmares.
These elements have nothing to do with the immediate sensations that will strike viewers as they watch Varda’s 1965 drama. It’s only close to the end of this experience that its subtext, though obvious for quite some time before this, hammers home its point on a definitive, highly unsettling note. Instead, Le Bonheur begins by showcasing its evocative colour palette with sumptuous backdrops that succeed in their goal of dazzling viewers, placed alongside light-hearted nature scenes of a family tenderly embracing one another as they admire their idyllic surroundings. Married couple François (Jean-Claude Drouot) and Thérèse (Claire Drouot) seem as if they could not be any happier with the lives they have forged together with their two children, Pierrot (Olivier Drouot) and Gisou (Sandrine Drouot).
All four of these performers, including the two very young child actors, do an excellent job of making their relationships with each other believable. It’s not surprising, then, that all four actors were a family unit, with only Jean-Claude being a career actor. Given that Claire has only starred in a handful of projects throughout her life, she shows great promise as an actor, never ringing a false note in her portrayal of a housewife who isn’t just in love with her husband and children, but with life itself and what it has given her.
One could argue that this tale is just a little too happy, if anything. The romantic imagery and gorgeous cinematography, which is somehow expressive in its bright explosion of colour while being just muted enough to evoke a warm and fuzzy feeling, might not stir much doubt, but the easygoing nature of the couple’s love and their carefree outing maps on too perfectly to the kinds of love stories found in escapist romance novels. And while it’s clear even from its opening scenes that Varga isn’t entirely concerned with depicting reality (at least, not in the conventional sense), anyone who is aware of her filmography and keen insights into the human condition will be dubious about a plot that appears so saccharine and conflict-free.
Such audiences would be right to question what lies before them, with the story quickly giving way to an affair between François and Émilie (Marie-France Boyer), a post office worker and single woman who looks remarkably like Thérèse. It isn’t long before this smitten duo decide to meet outside of Émilie’s workplace, and it takes even less time from here for the pair to consummate their new relationship. If pressed on his infidelity, François would no doubt deny that he detests or doesn’t respect his wife, and one gets the sense that this protagonist truly believes this. His total lack of self-awareness is matched only by his inability to show even a smidgeon of loyalty towards his life partner. In this character’s eyes, he has too much love to provide for it to be only channelled towards one person, necessitating his extramarital excursions. Yet even then he justifies his wayward morality by insisting to himself that he is not merely cheating, but allowing his love to be funnelled exclusively to two people instead of one.
The unspoken rule, one suspects, is that such a nightmarish villain masquerading as a benevolent, loving husband wouldn’t at all be comfortable if the roles in this relationship were reversed. (Interestingly, the film received a classification of ‘Forbidden to people under 18’ in its home country of France for allegedly offering a morally neutral take on adultery, which seems totally at odds with the essence of Le Bonheur.) One assumes that patriarchal thinking influences this notion, just as one can easily imagine how disturbed this protagonist would be if his wife were to adopt his way of thinking, but the latter point comes across as mute when it isn’t explored in the slightest.
Le Bonheur may be a fascinating experiment, as well as a truly gorgeous film, but it is hardly a complete one. Take the movie’s score, for instance, whose whimsical notes are employed so frequently that, by the time the final scene takes place, the effect is truly aggravating. Could this merely be a case of an unintentionally frustrating soundtrack, or is the inane repetition just another of the many ways Le Bonheur looks to impose its ironic viewpoint and sow doubt over the film’s unabashedly light-hearted opening? Assuming for a moment that it is the latter, the intention behind it is certainly admirable, but the tragedy embedded in this ironic look at a ‘happy’ marriage is mired in unwelcome compositions that make the film’s ideas less impressive for it.
The score is just a microcosm of factors that reveal Le Bonheur to be a far more interesting experiment than a feature film. It’s intentionally incurious about Thérèse as a person, a necessary by-product of how little her interests and feelings matter to François. But while she is unambiguously the victim of this torturous relationship, made all the more unbearable for viewers given that she is none the wiser to her husband’s adultery, the married couple are complicit in a saccharine romance that seems to have no genuine feeling. It’s only in the faux storybook world of this film that such a relationship could survive, where their day-to-day routine is buoyed by a lightness totally at odds with the ups and downs of married life. This is yet another necessary evil since to contrast the nightmarish scenario the film presents, where Varga must insist on an all-consuming ease of mind for both halves of this couple.
As for François’ affair, this is depicted in thorough detail, with fairly humdrum scenes that are easy to forget once they’ve passed. Again, inspired dialogue can’t rise to the surface here, since that would imply a substance to these conversations that this experience can’t allow for. While Varga does permit this in very small doses, even these exchanges, such as Émilie’s admission that she’s only ever felt happiness with a man on one other occasion, don’t warrant much thought.
Though Le Bonheur ends on a satisfyingly devastating note, ultimately tying together what it wants to say and hammering it home with a fittingly bitter conclusion, more often than not the experience of watching it is rather dull, with only its gorgeous visuals being consistently entertaining. Whether it’s Thérèse’s intentionally small role or the film’s scant characterisation, mundane conversations, and annoyingly repetitive score, this film is far more gratifying on an intellectual level than an emotional one. Le Bonheur is a fascinating experiment, but the same cannot be said of the experience of viewing the film, especially on a rewatch when one expects its bitter trickery.
FRANCE | 1965 | 80 MINUTES | 1.66:1 | COLOUR | FRENCH
Cast & Crew
writer & director: Agnès Varda.
starring: Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Marie-France Boyer, Olivier Drouot, Sandrine Drouot & Marcelle Faure-Bertin.
