La moustache

"The Moustache" is a comedy that, starting from the most trivial of pretexts, quickly turns into a true Kafkian nightmare. A man shaves his mustache. No one seems to notice, and in a surrealistic parody of male mid-life crisis this causes conflict, pain and uncertainty. But more and more threads come undone in the fabric of his reality.

Excellent self-adaptation of a short novel by Emmanuel Carrère, La Moustache delivers the spectator with much more than it promises, in these days a rare occurrence indeed. Vincent Lindon as the troubled protagonist is good and measured, and the movie has an excellent pace and nothing is overdone. Even the theme, a Philip Glass "Concerto pour violon et orchestre" could not be more effective. Will we ever see this movie in the USA? Maybe in a parallel reality.

This movie is a prime example of how the simplest things can mushroom out of control. Architect Marc (Vincent Lindon) has had a moustache since he was knee high to a blueprint and it is, he feels, part of him, then he takes it into his head to speculate on just how much he is identified via the moustache. He starts by asking his live-in lover Agnes (Manu Devos) whether she would still fancy him sans moustache; since she's only known him with it she can't answer. So, out comes the razor and THEN comes the uneasiness that segues into genuine fright. Not only does Devos not notice the difference but neither do their friends and his colleagues at work. We are now on the fringes of a Kafkaesque scenario which isn't really resolved satisfactorily. For reasons that eluded me Marc, by now convinced that Devos has some hidden agenda he can't fathom, lights out for Hong Kong literally in just the clothes he stands up in and spends a few days - weeks, months? - riding the ferry before Devos shows up, or does she? For one thing how did she know where he was and/or track him down to the fleabag where's he's taken a room. Lots of food for thought here and the acting is out of the right bottle if anybody asks you.

French author Emmanuel Carrère's sole venture into feature filmmaking by far, LA MOUSTACHE is adapted from his own novel published in 1986, a head-scratching story about a middle-aged French man Marc (Lindon), whose life starts to collapse after he shaved his trademark moustache on a whim, and everyone around starts to behave that they have never seen him in moustache, including his wife Agnès (Devos).

So, under this presumption, there could be two possible explanations: either Agnès is right, so Marc must have some serious psychological issues should be treated with kid gloves; or, Agnès is lying, when having dinner at their friends', Agnès is accused as an incorrigible liar by her ex- boyfriend Serge (Amalric), which might insinuate that an underhand conspiracy theory is in the pipeline. Cinematically, it is rather an intriguing premise, however, in hindsight, as the film turns out to be an experiment completely open to each individual's own interpretation, Carrère knowingly oscillates between these two scenarios lest the plot would veer to either direction with no turning back.

Take the example of the photo albums Marc finds, it is a trip to Bali years ago and obviously he is sporting a moustache in every picture, but, instead of pushing forward his proofs to Agnès or his friends, he chooses to withhold it until the album goes missing, if that's a slip of mind, later we clearly see his moustache in both the head-shots in his wallets and his passport, why not show them to contest his belief, or just visit his parents, who should know the truth, but no, because, it would channel the story into a dead-end, either Agnès is right or she is playing a bigger game to dupe him, either way, it would lose the mystical allure.

So, out of wits to keep the suspense rolling, Carrère employs a brisk geographical shift to Hong Kong, where Marc aimlessly and tediously moseys on ferry rides, an economical transportation in a metropolitan city (which might be used to save a fair amount of cost in shooting whilst the crew could enjoy their vacation), so as to buy some time to let his moustache grow back, then, bang! Surreal events materialise again, and viewers have no sooner recovered from the bamboozling revelation than the film reaches its succinct finish line, admittedly, it is an in-your-face anticlimax.

Masked as an existential fable, LA MOUSTACHE intrigues at first, but pretty soon loses its sway and resorts to absurd-ism and metaphysics, which could be an alternative to lift the bar, like Denis Villeneuve did in ENEMY (2013), but in this case, it only betrays the filmmaker's incompetence to concoct up anything could possibly give a plausible justification, a cheap cop-out always tastes bitter and gets under one's skin.

Borrowing a few techniques from the likes of Lynch or Haneke, La Moustache presents an engaging but intentionally confusing story of one man's facial hair and the strange series of events that are set off once that hairy upper lip was removed. Acting as a catalyst in this bizarrely written mystery, The Moustache really plays better as psychological drama then the semi-ludicrous, detail-specific, identity riddle it's seductive direction and powerful performances wooed us into believing. Guided by typical cornerstones of praised European fare, this film, as stubborn or illogical as it may be, is punctuated by the restrained and observant direction of it's original novelist Emmanuel Carrère, and crowned by the masterfully human performance Vincent Lindon imbues this difficult character. When the final credits have rolled, many will be left scratching their heads, already forming diverging conclusions as to what this movie actually had to say. Though there seemed to be too much left to speculation with too many plot holes to justify everything I saw, this was still a compelling mistake at worst and is still worth taking the shave even if the final result feels more pretentiously derivative then compellingly original.

At first, through the first third of the movie, I was sure that the film was an allegory about the architect's family and friends never actually noticing him (or his moustache). Things got confusing to me when he didn't press his wife about the Bali photographs (which appear to confirm he's NOT crazy), his wife is apparently trying to have him committed and he suddenly escapes to Hong Kong.

Though I did enjoy the film immensely in all its detail, I kept feeling there must have been a link between his moustache (and the identity crisis shaving it off led to) and his father's death. His father's death seemed to have discombobulated him.

Did his own confusion about his moustache symbolize his inability to digest the death of his father? Was he dreaming all of the confusion about his moustache?

In the end, I'm left with questions only. Nonetheless, I did enjoy this film and would like to know what other people think of it and what they make of it.