Le bonheur

François leads an idyllic life full of happiness. He loves his wife and their young children; he enjoys his work as a carpenter; and the country town where he lives is awash with sunshine and smiling faces. So when he meets a pretty girl working at the post office, what could be more natural and right than to take a further sip from the bowl of happiness?

Le Bonheur is a delicious sugar-coated bonbon with a bitter centre. What disturbs the viewer most is the cool unjudging gaze of Varda's camera: the characters are naive but not cruel, and when tragedy strikes it comes about from a childlike pursuit of happiness. Then the seasons change, and life continues with no-one wiser than before...

The emphatic pastel colour palette of the film, and the music of Mozart that plays insistently throughout, are beautiful and cloyingly seductive. They entice us into the innocent fantasy world of François, where all it takes to do the right thing is to follow your desires. What could possibly go wrong?

Le Bonheur is an exquisite, delicate, ambiguous masterpiece of the type that Hollywood was, is and always will be incapable of producing.

Similar in many ways to the fantastic "Cléo de 5 à 7", a charming, mature and playful look at temptation and marriage.Not only great for it's chromatic & musical scales (color-fades, very colorful scenes are organized like moments withing a musical composition), the dialogues are right on as well - at first, it might seem a little 'sappy', but with 15minutes, you're enraptured!

At first sight, Le Bonheur seems just a conventional film, with everything being too perfect. Each single frame is a beautiful picture in composition and color. We see a happily married couple, with charming and beautiful children, nice family picnics in the country, the sublime music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in two of his most beautiful pieces (Adagio and Fugue in C minor and the Clarinet Quintet). Happiness (Bonheur) and harmony is everywhere.

But then the husband meets another woman, very different from his wife, falls in love with her, and proposes a thesis: for him, happiness is not a subtractive affair - it all adds up. After being in love with his new lover, he manages to love his wife and children even more. Love, happiness, harmony should never be too much, Agnès Varda seems to say. But is it possible? Or, better: do people make it possible? Shouldn't it be possible?

That's why this apparently bourgeois film is, in fact, revolutionary. It proposes a new vision on certain matters that is, ultimately, extremely subversive. And it does so in a most contrasting environment.

That said, it has some of the most gorgeous images in film to look at. The use of colour is amazing. And, exactly for being so beautiful, the conclusion is so shocking.

In short: one of the most important films in History, one of the most subversive, and certainly one of the most beautiful. We can only say: thank you, Agnès Varda, for making it. Hope people will understand it better, in the future, and grasp the challenge you have cast.

How do you rate a film like this? It wasn't really made to be rated. Unfortunately, we live in bonehead times when American idol has made every loser a critic. So, I give it an 7 based only on my purely subjective view, compared to other films that have made a mark.

One moronic reviewer writes this film off as "A perfect little nothing...Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur is a perfect little composition. A nice, sweet portrait...There is no fault in this film, except that it feels a little empty. Varda's hand is light and inspired, and about as dramatic as its cheerful score...a wonderful ode to a summer's day, with barely a hint of winter." Gag.

That person obviously only watched part of the film (or, more than likely, played it in the background while surfing the internet) or he/she suffers from a Jeffrey Dahmer-like view of the world.

Believe me, the light and airy music and cinematography is there to fool you. Look deeper and there's some wicked commentary going on.

Varda's films are more valuable than film school for emerging filmmakers (unless you aspire to be one of those big-mouth "Film Makers" who loves to spout off in the video store or Starbucks).

This is a movie for people who can sit and watch. Not those who need to be spoon-fed their movies and can't sit for five minutes without fondling a cell phone.

A man in a happy marriage with two kids begins an affair, sincerely feeling he has enough love for both women and that neither one will be loved less. To start with, it's absolutely beautiful to look at. Varda always seems to know exactly what to do with the image, where to put the camera, which direction to move, when to cut, what color to fade to; everything is absolutely perfect.

Moreover, the film is completely fascinating first because Varda deals with her subject with a rare honesty and forgiveness. Not a single character is unlikeable. Even if you see error in the husband's thinking, it is clear he believes with all of his heart that he truly can love both of these women at once and you sympathize with his sincerity. The wife is easy to care for, a good mother and very devoted, and the mistress is not someone you feel compelled to hate, either. She's not out to break up this marriage and she seems to really need this love.

And what makes the film endlessly interesting is in how ambiguous Varda is about her own feelings. She never leads you to pick a side, never encourages you to see one specific viewpoint or leave the film feeling a particular way about what happened. While the music (Mozart is used throughout most of the film) in the last 15 minutes would seem to suggest anger at the way things have turned out, you can also look at the early stages of the film and see the image of the idyllic family with pastoral music as too perfect a presentation, one that is not entirely believable. Varda even hints at this herself; after we've watched about five minutes of this family picnicking in the woods, she cuts almost immediately to nearly the same image in a TV advertisement, suggesting that a marriage that happy only exists in commercials to begin with.