("Le mari de la coiffeuse")
The director (Patrice Leconte) has a gift for helping us see people from other perspectives (e.g., "The Man on the Train"). As in that movie, Jean Rochefort is one of the leading characters.
As there can be no one single meaning to a work of art, so any movie will evoke many. But I strongly disagree with the narrative described in most other reviews of this charming movie, thinking my own makes far more sense.
Antoine, a boy about 12 years old on the cusp of puberty, enjoys the sensuality of physical closeness to the woman barber who cuts his hair, his head often cradled against her ample bosom.
His father has aspirations for his children and, one evening at supper, he asks this son what he wants to be when he grows up. He mistakes Antoine's answer, groping toward his awakening sexuality (and wanting to marry a woman barber), for a lack of ambition. He disapproves of his son's announced goal and over-reacts, chastising him at the supper table, and sending him immediately to his room. (We see a hint that then both he and his wife wonder if he's been overly punishing.)
But instead of being hurt or angry, Antoine takes further solace in his fantasy, very much as Max did (in quite different ways) in the classic book, "Where the Wild Things Are." Whereas Max became king of the Wild Things; the rest of this movie is Antoine's dream of what his future would be if married to a woman barber/hairdresser.
As in a dream--as in a 12 year old boy's simplified view of what it means to be a married adult and what an adult world is like--many parts of reality are missing: e.g., it's as if he needs no job, as if love and marriage happen in almost an instant, as if his wife's life revolves only about him and his about her, as if all their adult life takes place in his wife's barber shop where he's constantly present, and as if his wife would, of course, prefer death to the risk of losing him.
The somewhat bizarre little recurring dance which he does underscores the non-reality, the dream-like quality in this major part of the movie.
This is an utterly charming movie of the world of a boy who is just coming into puberty, trying to make sense of this delightful experience of being close to a woman's body.
That's the meaning to me and this view is so very compelling I cannot believe the director intended any other.
The director (Patrice Leconte) has a gift for helping us see people from other perspectives (e.g., "The Man on the Train"). As in that movie, Jean Rochefort is one of the leading characters.
As there can be no one single meaning to a work of art, so any movie will evoke many. But I strongly disagree with the narrative described in most other reviews of this charming movie, thinking my own makes far more sense.
Antoine, a boy about 12 years old on the cusp of puberty, enjoys the sensuality of physical closeness to the woman barber who cuts his hair, his head often cradled against her ample bosom.
His father has aspirations for his children and, one evening at supper, he asks this son what he wants to be when he grows up. He mistakes Antoine's answer, groping toward his awakening sexuality (and wanting to marry a woman barber), for a lack of ambition. He disapproves of his son's announced goal and over-reacts, chastising him at the supper table, and sending him immediately to his room. (We see a hint that then both he and his wife wonder if he's been overly punishing.)
But instead of being hurt or angry, Antoine takes further solace in his fantasy, very much as Max did (in quite different ways) in the classic book, "Where the Wild Things Are." Whereas Max became king of the Wild Things; the rest of this movie is Antoine's dream of what his future would be if married to a woman barber/hairdresser.
As in a dream--as in a 12 year old boy's simplified view of what it means to be a married adult and what an adult world is like--many parts of reality are missing: e.g., it's as if he needs no job, as if love and marriage happen in almost an instant, as if his wife's life revolves only about him and his about her, as if all their adult life takes place in his wife's barber shop where he's constantly present, and as if his wife would, of course, prefer death to the risk of losing him.
The somewhat bizarre little recurring dance which he does underscores the non-reality, the dream-like quality in this major part of the movie.
This is an utterly charming movie of the world of a boy who is just coming into puberty, trying to make sense of this delightful experience of being close to a woman's body.
That's the meaning to me and this view is so very compelling I cannot believe the director intended any other.