There's just something about Vincent Lindon, a mix of charm, vulnerability and male charisma that makes his screen-presence undeniable... and effortless. Is it his droopy and sad big eyes with that expression of childish bewilderment, is it that sensual crop of brownish hair making him look younger... Lindon is the perfect candidate for characters of a few words because he's good at acting, even more at reacting. And so "La Moustache" is the perfect canvas for his talent.
Lindon is Marc, a man whose life took a strange turn after he shaved his moustache. Such a preposterous premise can be ruined by overacting and director Emmanuel Carrere (who wrote the original book) had done half the job by casting Lindon. Is his performance good enough to carry the film? My bet is that viewers will either be disappointed by the ending and look at it as a copout or will enjoy the psychological nightmare and its existential implications. Lindon's performance will either be a consolation or a consolidation.
What they won't find though is answers: "La Moustache" is one of these mystery thrillers that aren't designed to 'get you', but that are rather concerned by the atmosphere, the emotions and the way reality can gaslight a man, bringing him to sheer insanity.
Back to the film. Marc is a designer, we first see him taking a bath and chatting with his wife Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos). How would it look if he shaved his moustache? She says she never knew him without one. We know that's crucial exposition. She goes outside for a little while, he decides to cut the whole thing. When she gets back, we see Marc trying to hide his face for as long as he can, to prepare her for a big reveal... that she doesn't notice. He's surprised but doesn't blink. On the car, you can see in his face that he's distracted by that anticlimactic reaction (or non-reaction for that matter) and probably thinks what we would think in his place. What kind of joke is that?
They visit a couple friends, she goes first while he's looking for a parking spot, when he gets to their house, they don't notice either. At that point, Marc doesn't feel like having fun, there's a long story told by Serge delivered by the laconic tone of Mathieu Almaric and I suspect his rhythm was deliberately slowed down to accentuate Marc's boredom. He's obviously not interested and neither are we. All Marc wants is to know why the hell no one notices that he's shaven his moustache. He confronts Agnes in the car and the verdict falls in form of an argument: he's never had a moustache.
And so the plot thickens.
There's no need going further because this is basically the premise of the film: a big global conspiracy without any rationale behind. Even his colleagues fail to notice the big change, prompting him to start smoking again. The film is like a sort of Hitchcockian paranoid thriller à la "Wrong Man" or "The Lady Vanishes" when the heroine was told there was no old lady with her. Only the nightmare is reinforced by the absence of motives. Why would Agnes lie? Or the others?
The story slides towards the supernatural when many aspects of his life he took for granted slowly generates into nothingness, like these dreams with fictional truths or facts. Marc's life becomes a nightmare whose psychological tempo is driven by piano music, orchestrated by Carrere.
The film puzzled me, I was first intrigued by its choice to open directly with the shaving, I figured it would take ten or fifteen minutes to expose the characters, ... but since we saw him with a moustache, there's no reason to doubt he had one. And the real strength of the film is that everyone plays it totally straight, there's no villain, Agnes is totally natural and seems as confused as he is. One shortcoming is the use of ellipse at convenient moments, the car argument is cut abruptly and we never see Marc's reaction. Also the bit about the photo album is never fully explored. Did she see that he's got facial hair or not?
My wife told me that there had to be some symbolism with the facial hair, each clip of hair was a memory, or maybe it was because he didn't ask her first... she could be right even if she wasn't, I don't think it matters: such films could be easily be entrapped in their own premise and be a sort of mental claustrophobia but the third act takes us to Hong Kong, of all the places. Why? Why not? When you become estranged to your own life, better be a stranger and an anonymous, period. Marc tries to create patterns, goes to one place to another, takes the same ferry boat, mixes with the crowd, tries to earn some looks and smiles and things go that way, I didn't see where it was heading at, my patience was getting to an end and at that moment, Agnes comes back, her presence validating one of my wife's theories and there's an interesting bit with the moustache that doesn't provide a definite answer but tie the plot together and give the sense of closure that made me wish for the film to end at that moment. And it did.
Is there a definite answer? I don't know. But I know Lindon's paranoia and growing madness work so well that I could really get in his shoes, even the soaked ones. Now, why the story of a man shaving moustache and no one noticing? There could be many interpretations, I like the idea that it might be a metaphor for these initiatives we take in order to vainly earn ourselves the approval of people around us. Maybe Marc overestimated his importance and needed a humbling experience... who knows?
Lindon is Marc, a man whose life took a strange turn after he shaved his moustache. Such a preposterous premise can be ruined by overacting and director Emmanuel Carrere (who wrote the original book) had done half the job by casting Lindon. Is his performance good enough to carry the film? My bet is that viewers will either be disappointed by the ending and look at it as a copout or will enjoy the psychological nightmare and its existential implications. Lindon's performance will either be a consolation or a consolidation.
What they won't find though is answers: "La Moustache" is one of these mystery thrillers that aren't designed to 'get you', but that are rather concerned by the atmosphere, the emotions and the way reality can gaslight a man, bringing him to sheer insanity.
Back to the film. Marc is a designer, we first see him taking a bath and chatting with his wife Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos). How would it look if he shaved his moustache? She says she never knew him without one. We know that's crucial exposition. She goes outside for a little while, he decides to cut the whole thing. When she gets back, we see Marc trying to hide his face for as long as he can, to prepare her for a big reveal... that she doesn't notice. He's surprised but doesn't blink. On the car, you can see in his face that he's distracted by that anticlimactic reaction (or non-reaction for that matter) and probably thinks what we would think in his place. What kind of joke is that?
They visit a couple friends, she goes first while he's looking for a parking spot, when he gets to their house, they don't notice either. At that point, Marc doesn't feel like having fun, there's a long story told by Serge delivered by the laconic tone of Mathieu Almaric and I suspect his rhythm was deliberately slowed down to accentuate Marc's boredom. He's obviously not interested and neither are we. All Marc wants is to know why the hell no one notices that he's shaven his moustache. He confronts Agnes in the car and the verdict falls in form of an argument: he's never had a moustache.
And so the plot thickens.
There's no need going further because this is basically the premise of the film: a big global conspiracy without any rationale behind. Even his colleagues fail to notice the big change, prompting him to start smoking again. The film is like a sort of Hitchcockian paranoid thriller à la "Wrong Man" or "The Lady Vanishes" when the heroine was told there was no old lady with her. Only the nightmare is reinforced by the absence of motives. Why would Agnes lie? Or the others?
The story slides towards the supernatural when many aspects of his life he took for granted slowly generates into nothingness, like these dreams with fictional truths or facts. Marc's life becomes a nightmare whose psychological tempo is driven by piano music, orchestrated by Carrere.
The film puzzled me, I was first intrigued by its choice to open directly with the shaving, I figured it would take ten or fifteen minutes to expose the characters, ... but since we saw him with a moustache, there's no reason to doubt he had one. And the real strength of the film is that everyone plays it totally straight, there's no villain, Agnes is totally natural and seems as confused as he is. One shortcoming is the use of ellipse at convenient moments, the car argument is cut abruptly and we never see Marc's reaction. Also the bit about the photo album is never fully explored. Did she see that he's got facial hair or not?
My wife told me that there had to be some symbolism with the facial hair, each clip of hair was a memory, or maybe it was because he didn't ask her first... she could be right even if she wasn't, I don't think it matters: such films could be easily be entrapped in their own premise and be a sort of mental claustrophobia but the third act takes us to Hong Kong, of all the places. Why? Why not? When you become estranged to your own life, better be a stranger and an anonymous, period. Marc tries to create patterns, goes to one place to another, takes the same ferry boat, mixes with the crowd, tries to earn some looks and smiles and things go that way, I didn't see where it was heading at, my patience was getting to an end and at that moment, Agnes comes back, her presence validating one of my wife's theories and there's an interesting bit with the moustache that doesn't provide a definite answer but tie the plot together and give the sense of closure that made me wish for the film to end at that moment. And it did.
Is there a definite answer? I don't know. But I know Lindon's paranoia and growing madness work so well that I could really get in his shoes, even the soaked ones. Now, why the story of a man shaving moustache and no one noticing? There could be many interpretations, I like the idea that it might be a metaphor for these initiatives we take in order to vainly earn ourselves the approval of people around us. Maybe Marc overestimated his importance and needed a humbling experience... who knows?