a romp about happiness

To counteract the malaise of yesterday - and what convalescence would be complete without at least one day of black despair? - I post a review I just wrote for LoveFilm. The subject is "Cousin, Cousine" which I loved as a teenager and have been waiting since then to see again. Anyone concerned that the baroque state of mind may be slipping too close to the El Greco mentioned yesterday will be cheered to note that this is the only movie I have watched all week.

The review:

"Cousin Cousine" is the story - if that isn't too strong a word - of two attractive second-cousins-by-marriage (Marie-Christine Barrault and Victor Lanoux) who meet at a family wedding. When Marthe’s husband - an incorrigible adulterer- and Ludovic’s spoilt, childish wife bunk off together the two start a friendship that turns brazenly into an affair.

Morally, the film both shrugs and justifies itself: in 1975 life wasn’t all about the rocketing divorce rate and children growing up in broken homes, it was all about personal fulfillment. Marthe’s husband Pascal has been cheating on her with a comically wide array of women, and Ludovic’s wife Karine (Marie-France Pisier) is only ever happy at her sleep-therapy clinic.

Both partners are determined to be happy. Their constant smiling almost seems, watching this from the other side of the millennium, like inanity – and the fakeness of their smiles hints at the darkness beneath - but it is still infectious. And (like the BBC's "Life on Mars" earlier this year) it's a salutary reminder of how much more tolerant we were of each other in the pre-nanny-state seventies. In England this would have been a farce: inanity is its métier. It's a romp – a romp about happiness.

This affair is very much a family affair: the setting creates a platform for several vignettes illustrating modern sexuality: her (still sexy) mother coming to terms with advancing age, his cynical teenage daughter; his widowed father, her (what would have been called then) male chauvinist husband. It also makes for an affectionate look at what keeps us all together through thick and thin. There are some great comic turns, and about fifty very cute children.
The narrative structure, with its weddings and funerals, predates (and may have inspired) Four Weddings and a Funeral, and functions in much the same way here. Life’s rich tapestry is woven by repetition and variance: the husband and wife who bicker in the car on the way there, the children, the family rivalries. There are some wonderfully funny moments, like Karine’s failed suicide scene. Guy Marchand as Pascal is marvellously pathetic, one of the best things in the movie.

I'd been waiting for 20 years to see this movie again, having loved it as a teenager. It does look dated now: the ‘happiness’; way the grandmother teaches all the family kids to sing, Von Trapp-style; the Lothario husband; and the especially the music and the lettering in the credits, give it the feel of a sitcom in places. But it also retains a freshness (as a good sitcom would), and an innocence which is completely engaging. Even then that innocence was calculated: the film does not ignore the unhappiness that lies behind the protagonists’ search for the real thing. A better director might have got the smiles less fake, but "Cousin Cousine" is still charming. Perfect for a duvet day – whether you’re under there alone or with someone else.