Le Mari de la Coiffeuse

Le Mari de la Coiffeuse

Dir: Patrice Leconte

Starring: Jean Rochefort, Anne Galiena

You always know you’re not going to get a happy ending with a French film. The only question is how bad it will be and how long you’ll have to wait.

In the case of Le Mari de la Coiffeuse, it comes after an hour and a quarter.

There’s something to be said for a story confident enough to make its point before the 80 minute mark, but Le Mari doesn’t just make a point, it leaves a small melancholic stain on the back of the brain.

That, in a nutshell, is as much as you can ask of any piece of art.

We spend the first third of the film following young Antoine (later played as an adult by Jean Rochefort) as he falls in love with his aging hairdresser, a woman who leaves her blouse sufficiently undone for him to catch a fleeting glimpse of her breast.

Upon her death, he develops an obsession over her that haunts him for the rest of his life.

We rejoin him after thirty years or so, now a middle aged and rather sad looking man. Going to a barber’s, he sets his eyes on the beautiful Anne Galiena, a hairdresser, and, you guessed it, it is love at first sight.

All of which sounds sombre and slow and, well, French.

None of it indicates, however, just how breezily the film progresses, while always remaining substantial and worthwhile.

Leconte really knows his way around the sticky, sensuous glow of pre-pubescent sexual awakenings, the discovery of something more significant than the sum of its parts.

The way he injects those feelings into the adult scenes between Rochefort and Galiena produces a strange, heart-warming response. It’s not every day you’re treated to sex scenes that actually develop character, or that are laughable and yet oddly kinky at the same time.

For a story that concerns itself with the doomed decay of romantic love into affection, it’s also impressive how far Leconte manages to soak the screen in warmth and understanding.

As his youthful object of affection lies dead on the floor of the barber’s, young Antoine still attempts to peek up her skirt from outside the glass door. Amazingly, scenes like this are made genuinely heart-warming, teasing out humour and empathy from what are incessantly tragic circumstances.

Performance wise, Galiena demonstrates one of those rare conjunctions of expression and physique that elevate her from a beautiful woman to a sort of glowing virgin queen, the kind of canvas the audience can pin Antoine’s feelings for her onto.

For his part, Rochefort nimbly traverses the sweet natured perversion of his character without flinching from its reality or coming across as unpleasant. It was this that Sir Peter O Tool recently attempted, but ultimately failed, in his Oscar nominated turn in Venus.

What you’re left with is a twisted, bittersweet little love story, the kind of film adults should be watching on Valentine’s Day.