MON HOMME (director/writer: Bertrand Blier; cinematographer: Pierre Lhomme; editor: Claudine Merlin; cast: Anouk Grinberg (Marie), Gerard Lanvin (Jeannot), Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Tangerine), Mathieu Kassovitz (Client), Olivier Martinez (Jean-François), Dominique Valadié (Gilberte), Sabine Azema (Berangere), Jean-Pierre Leaud (Client); Runtime: 98; Artificial Eye; 1996-France)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A lifeless satire on the foibles of mankind (men can't be trusted and women can be bought), as seen through the eyes of a soft-hearted prostitute. This is not one of the filmmaker's better comedies, it seems too preachy in trying to convince us of how sex and love go together like politics and politicians. Betrand Blier's ("Going Places"/"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs") means of accomplishing this, is to try and shock our values by offering us politically incorrect views on life. It was all ho-hum...who cares, as the characters could never be seen as real people and the action was dull and ridiculous. At one point in the film, a character is offered the choice of hearing Barry White or Vivaldi -- and -- without a hesitation chooses White. I would have chosen Vivaldi, but Barry White songs are played throughout, thereafter, and in my opinion were the most lively thing about this film.
The film is set in Lyon, where we are told there is a large unemployment problem and because of that men seek pleasure from prostitutes more than they do in good times. In the opening scene Marie (Grinberg), a pert prostitute, sits on a bar stool outside a hotel and talks a passing matronly housewife Gilberte (Valadié) into turning a trick and getting paid for what she enjoys doing, anyway. The belabored point made is, what a joy sex is. Marie is proud that she's found her true calling in life, to be a prostitute, and sell true love while she gets handsomely paid and laid for it.
The core of the story is when she returns to her apartment and finds a homeless bum asleep by the garbage can. She invites him in, falls entranced by his disheveled look, and has sex with him dog style. Afraid of losing Jeannot (Lanvin), who turns out to be a stud -- she makes him her pimp and gives him all the money she makes, the $1,000 a day she earns on her ass. After cleaning him up, buying him clothes, and giving him a purpose in life, the ungrateful pimp, who's a nice pimp, nevertheless, takes advantage of her masochistic nature. He breaks her heart by becoming slick and meeting a busty manicurist Tangerine (Tedeschi), whom he talks into turning tricks for him eventhough she's not cut out for that work. When he gets arrested for pimping and serves some jail time Marie decides to reform and have two kids with a husband, and to lead a bourgeois existence. She's not arrested because prostitution is legal in France, but pimping is not.
She moves on this new dream of hers while he's behind bars and picks up a handsome, unemployed man, Jean-François (Martinez), in a coffee shop and talks him into going along with her dream of an idyllic marriage. When he still can't find work after having the kids, she returns to being a prostitute, but the fun has gone out of it and it seems too businesslike to suit her fancy.
Blier just didn't take this story anywhere, even the elegant charms of the very ladylike whore, Grinberg, soon loses its appeal. I grew weary trying to follow Blier's logic, and what he had to say didn't seem to add up; I wasn't laughing at any of his satires. It turned into sentimental TV sitcom stuff instead of following through on the theme of all the sexual alienation there is in society, a theme it quickly jettisoned for no discernible reason by following the pimp around instead of the whore; especially, since it had nothing else to say that mattered.
REVIEWED ON 7/8/2001 GRADE: C -
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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