La Moustache

Review By: Aaron Cutler
AaronCutler@thecinemasource.com

There is a moment in Kushner’s Angels in America when one of the characters tells his wife, “My whole life has conspired to bring me to this place, and I can’t despise my whole life.” I thought of that line during the new French film, La Moustache, but with a twist: The main character tries to despise his life, to outrun it, but cannot.

Writer-director Emmanuel Carrére’s second feature (his first, 2003’s Return to Kotelnitch, has yet to have a US release) begins with a simple premise: Marc Thiriez (Vincent Lindon), a comfortable, forty-something businessman, decides one night to give his wife Agnés (Emmanuelle Devos) a surprise by shaving off his fine salt-and-pepper mustache that he has had for many years. He clips it off in the bathtub and steps out, a towel wrapped around his lip. It drops, but Agnés says nothing. He beats around the bush, confused, until he finally comes out and asks her if she’s noticed his missing mustache. She says he’s never had a mustache.

Marc goes to a party that night, but his friends do not notice. He goes to work the next day, but his co-workers say nothing. Everyone concurs with his wife’s judgment. Perhaps they are all playing a joke, but why do they seem so serious? Perhaps Marc has lost his mind, but what about those old vacation photos, wherein the mustache is in full bloom? What of the hair in the garbage? And will an argument with Agnés do him any good?

It is from this premise that Carrére’s screenplay (co-written with Jérôme Beaujour and based upon Carrére’s novel) steps forth, and in its early stages we find ourselves wondering exactly what kind of film we are watching. The characters are so mundane, their lives the ordinary stuff of middle-upper class metropolitans, and yet there is this strange new element, almost supernatural, and over time the film becomes a character study of Marc, the clean-faced gentleman, and of the haunted look in his eye.

The story is grounded in his relationship with Agnés; their relationship seems born out of love, but there is also a sense of isolation between them. The thematic elements of the film grow fascinating in the scenes with the two of them, as we wonder both how much of ourselves we sacrifice to be with another person and whether it is possible to ever know another person at all. In focusing in particular on Marc, Carrére also seems to be asking questions about a man’s role in an urban society, and whether in losing his mustache Marc loses pieces of his masculinity as well. Eventually Marc is driven to go searching for himself, but we watch him and wonder if there is any self left to find. We are distanced from ourselves in a modern urban society, but with the rise of technology we also grow isolated ...