Le Bonheur (1965) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title "Happiness." It was written and directed by Agnès Varda.
Jean-Claude Drouot plays François Chevalier, a cheerful, optimistic carpenter. His real-life wife, Claire Drouot, plays his film wife, Thérèse. (Their real-life children play their two children.)
Happiness is not only the title of the movie, it's also the theme of the film. François and Thérèse tell each other over and over that they are happy. Why not? They have a good life, and a good family. They are young, attractive, healthy, and in love.
The only problem is that apparently François isn't as happy as he could be. When he meets a postal clerk, Émilie, he falls in love with her. Émilie is played by Marie-France Boyer who is very beautiful. In the film, she's also very willing. She knows François is married, and that he won't leave his wife. She's apparently OK with that. The rest of the plot moves forward from this point.
I find it surprising that a great woman filmmaker like Varda would have this attitude about infidelity. As another reviewer wrote, she treats women as fungible. (New word for me--it means mutually interchangeable.)
The movie has a very unusual palette. It displays broad patches of primary colors. According to the person who introduced the film, Varda was imitating the women's magazines of the day. They were, indeed, all about finding happiness, and they were illustrated with bold primary colors.
It's hard to know what Varda was thinking when she wrote and directed this movie. Over the last 50 years, many people have tried to correlate the plot of Le Bonheur with Agnès Varda's own concept of happiness. I guess we all get to guess, but who will decide which answer is best?
We saw this movie at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. It's part of a Varda retrospective cosponsored by Rochester Institute of Technology and the Eastman Museum. It was a luxury to see this movie on the large screen. It won't work as well on the small screen, but you might find it worth your while to watch it. It's a film that's hard to pin down, so I don't give it a whole-hearted recommendation. Still, it's part of Varda's oeuvre. If you're a Varda fan, you might want to see it out of a drive for completion.
Jean-Claude Drouot plays François Chevalier, a cheerful, optimistic carpenter. His real-life wife, Claire Drouot, plays his film wife, Thérèse. (Their real-life children play their two children.)
Happiness is not only the title of the movie, it's also the theme of the film. François and Thérèse tell each other over and over that they are happy. Why not? They have a good life, and a good family. They are young, attractive, healthy, and in love.
The only problem is that apparently François isn't as happy as he could be. When he meets a postal clerk, Émilie, he falls in love with her. Émilie is played by Marie-France Boyer who is very beautiful. In the film, she's also very willing. She knows François is married, and that he won't leave his wife. She's apparently OK with that. The rest of the plot moves forward from this point.
I find it surprising that a great woman filmmaker like Varda would have this attitude about infidelity. As another reviewer wrote, she treats women as fungible. (New word for me--it means mutually interchangeable.)
The movie has a very unusual palette. It displays broad patches of primary colors. According to the person who introduced the film, Varda was imitating the women's magazines of the day. They were, indeed, all about finding happiness, and they were illustrated with bold primary colors.
It's hard to know what Varda was thinking when she wrote and directed this movie. Over the last 50 years, many people have tried to correlate the plot of Le Bonheur with Agnès Varda's own concept of happiness. I guess we all get to guess, but who will decide which answer is best?
We saw this movie at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. It's part of a Varda retrospective cosponsored by Rochester Institute of Technology and the Eastman Museum. It was a luxury to see this movie on the large screen. It won't work as well on the small screen, but you might find it worth your while to watch it. It's a film that's hard to pin down, so I don't give it a whole-hearted recommendation. Still, it's part of Varda's oeuvre. If you're a Varda fan, you might want to see it out of a drive for completion.