Le Bonheur (1965)

Not rated, but there is a lot that kids cannot see in the movie.  There is nudity, both in a sexual context and in a non-sexual context.  Like apparently all foreign films, this is a movie about having an affair and the fallout of having an affair.  (I am writing this, admittedly, in the midst of my journey through the works of Ingmar Bergman.)   Also, there's a suicide in the film that gets pretty rough.  It has a lot that is fairly objectionable.  

DIRECTOR:  Agnes Varda

Oh man, the font is huge on my new computer and the spacing is all off.  I have no idea how big this blog will be in the long run.  Yeah, I eyeball it.  So what?  All I know is that this blog is on a To-Do list full of low-priority things objectively, but high priority to me.  I'm a mess of stress and I need to get a blog about an Agnes Varda movie done.

Le Bonheur took me all over the place.  Maybe it is a good thing that I don't necessarily instantly adore every work by an auteur.  I mean, I'm probably wrong in a lot of those cases.   So when I start up an Agnes Varda movie, I'm not sure if I've signed up for a genius film or something that is going to drive me insane.  In the case of Le Bonheur, I kept on jumping between the two.  I didn't know what I was watching.  I think my takeaway is that this film is absolutely genius while being kind of dumb at the same time.  Okay, that's not even it.  I don't know.  The long and short is that I'm frustrated at this movie and I have to write about it to process it.  I'm a vulnerable human being with lots of flaws and writing helps me understand art sometimes.

For a long time, I thought that this was a movie about the joys of polygamy.  I am completely influenced by my deep dive into Ingmar Bergman and the fact that he treats infidelity as something that everyone does.  The Criterion Collection isn't a dummy.  They know that they put Le Bonheur on a disc labeled "Married Life."  I don't know much about Varda's marriage.  I even watched the documentary that started this whole thing.  But that was ages ago and I don't necessarily retain everything that I watch.  But for a minute, this was the loveliest take on infidelity ever.  I mean, sure, I hated Francois and I kept thinking that this isn't how the real world works. I knew that the real world gets messy.  I'm also in the mindset that some people make polygamy work, but it wasn't like how this movie was showing it.  After all, the movie has an incredibly chipper tone for the majority of the film.  Considering that Le Bonheur translates out to Happiness, it keeps with that idea for the majority of the movie.

Francois is an odd protagonist.  Now that the movie is over and I'm writing about it, I knew that I was right for hating this guy.  There are so many movies about the unfaithful.  But usually, the adulterer tends to be somewhat sympathetic.  There's something in their story that makes them tragically attracted to some kind of out.  Either that, or the movie paints the character as some kind of monster.  Varda doesn't quite do that.  One thing, as much as Varda paints with optimistic hues for this character, is that he is without motivation for his affair.  It does make him selfish.  But the way that Francois speaks, he is unique as a philanderer.  He doesn't really mince words with Emilie.  There's never a story where Francois wants to leave his wife.  If anything, he's the paragon of polyamory.  He keeps stressing that he loves everyone equally.  I mean, there was a reason why I kept stressing that I thought that this was going to be a treatise on polyamory.  It paints it like it is something that can absolutely be achieved.

Then the movie goes the other way with it and becomes an After School Special for a very specific crowd.  The movie just has Francois's wife, Therese, kill herself after the two made love.  See, Varda knew what I had floating in my head.  Again, I understand that there are people out there who are fine with having open relationships.  I can't wrap my head around such things nor would I want to, but I also don't want to throw stones at something that I don't understand.  What I do know is that it's not really an open relationship if someone doesn't have a choice in the matter.  Francois simply pursues Emelie without ever consulting Therese.  When he eventually reveals that he has been having an affair for months and that is why he is happier than he was before, it puts Therese in a situation that seems unwinnable.  I'm not in the mindset to victim blame here, but Therese absolutely should have destroyed him in this moment instead of --let me check --sleeping with him and then committing suicide.  But that's all on Francois.  It totally is.  It may be a bit much for a movie like this, but I respect that curveball of an ending.  (Note:  I would go as far as to say that this ending is needed to redeem the movie that was frustrating me at this point.)

Now, here's where the real unpacking happens.  What do I think of the end of the movie?  The end of the movie somehow makes the film a straight up horror movie.  Yeah, it might not be a gore ridden murderfest.  But Francois has a spare wife!  That's something that we need to think about.  Varda's most genius moment has in her bookending of the film.  The movie starts off with a blurry image of a family of four holding hands and walking towards the camera.  In that original shot, the mother is Therese.  But the movie ends with a family of four walking away from us and Emilie is the mother.  That's some messed up nonsense.  I've clearly lost some of you.  He goes right to Emilie immediately after the death of his wife.  And this is where the unpacking is happening.  The movie's name is Happiness.  That's Francois's entire motivation.  When he is unhappy, he does what he wants to restore that happiness.  I often roll my eyes when people need to look beyond happiness in life and value the important things.  But with the case of Francois, he's almost deleting an entire person so he can experience happiness.  Therese's death becomes almost an inconvenience.  That dinner table scene where people are volunteering to divvy up the kids shows the nightmare that Therese's parents are going through.  It's really quite bleak.

The movie ends in a world where Therese basically didn't exist.  Francois, in his pursuit of happiness, goes beyond hedonism.  He's almost a sociopath.  Yeah, he admits that he misses his wife.  But he says so with the same apathy that I just wrote that sentence.  He's more upset about being put out as a parent.  The more crazy part is that the supplanting of Therese with Emilie has so many weird beats that it is hard to wrap my head around these beats.  First of all, the kids are oddly cool with having a new mother.  But the bigger issue is the assumption that Emilie would want to be a mother of two on a dime.  Emilie feels incredibly immature for the entire film.  She's there because she finds Francois attractive.  I get it.  They're both gorgeous.  But Emilie is in a different place in her life.  She's not Therese.  Yet, she's all in on just upending her life for someone with whom she's only had an exclusively sexual relationship.  I don't know if that's the story that she told herself about how relationships are supposed to go.

In a very specific way, it seems against her character. Do I believe that she believes that she loves Francois?  Sure.  She seems pretty head-over-heels for Francois.  But she also claimed that she had a hard time taking the next step with a lot of men.  She always found reasons for distancing herself from them.  This entire upheaval of her life seems insanely out of character.  The only thing that really makes it makes sense is her immaturity.  After finally finding a place where she starts off her life as an individual adult, she's absorbed into finishing up someone else's life.  I'm not saying stepparenthood isn't for anyone.  I'm saying that Emilie isn't the most wired to make that choice.  It's a fascinating ending because it is such a bleak decision to end the movie on.

Overall, I'm going to say that I dug it.  It's a weird take on the narrative of infidelity.  It is harsh and oddly bleak of an ending.  Still, it is absolutely worth a watch.​