★ 7 / 10
Ha! Talk about having your cake and eating
CinemaSerf
Ha! Talk about having your cake and eating it! "François" (Jean-Claude Drouot) is happily married to "Thérèse" (Claire Drouot) and living in a small apartment…
Ha! Talk about having your cake and eating it! "François" (Jean-Claude Drouot) is happily married to "Thérèse" (Claire Drouot) and living in a small apartment with their two children "Pierrot" and "Gisou". They are a loving couple and seem perfectly content with life. Then "François" is despatched to do some work away from home and when calling his boss from the post office encounters "Émilie" (Marie-France Boyer) with whom he swaps a smile. That's just the beginning as the two chat a little, flirt a little and then... Now he isn't a bad man in any malevolent sense, he genuinely loves his wife and makes it clear to his new friend that she will always take priority - a situation that "Émilie" appears to be quite willing to accept - albeit reservedly. Thing is, on a family picnic he decides that it's only fair that his wife know the truth. On the face of it, at least that's an half way honest thing to do but, well you'll have to watch and see. There’s something unnervingly inconclusive about this film. Nobody is inherently bad or evil or even deliberately thoughtless, yet he is possibly one of the most selfish people I've ever seen (benignly) portrayed in cinema. He genuinely thinks his cherry-picking, almost like a job-share, arrangement will satisfy these women. It's tightly cast with a sufficient minimum of dialogue to augment a story that is surprisingly thought-provoking to watch. Maybe a little over-scored but well worth eighty minutes before a denouement that might make you want to look your own partner in the eye! Or maybe into a mirror...?
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★ 9 / 10
Beware the Bouquet
Greekguy
It's a love story, of a sort, but not what we usually see. Instead, it's a story about love. Instead of boy meets girl or vice versa, here we have a happily…
It's a love story, of a sort, but not what we usually see. Instead, it's a story about love. Instead of boy meets girl or vice versa, here we have a happily married individual, parent to two small children and husband to an adoring wife, who happens to fall in love again. What is to be done?
The first thing you notice are the colours - they're stunning, omnipresent and mysterious. Are they there to remind us that this isn't a black and white world, with simple answers, or are they there to beguile us, and lead us astray? Perhaps they're not there for us at all; they just are, like nature.
The next thing you notice is how often flowers come into the frame - right from the start, first as part of a fecund but cyclical natural world and then as bouquets, to make us think about what happens when we don't leave well enough alone. The wild flower, beautiful in its own environment, thrives; the cut flower, beautiful in our homes, dies. But we do want to have our cake and eat it, too.
This film was made in 1964, and it divided public opinion when it came out, because it challenged notions of fidelity and marriage that had endured, at least in their public proclamation, unchanged for centuries. It did so by presenting the act of taking a lover while married as an arguably logical step, based on the concept that happiness can be increased for one without being decreased for another. Whether that concept applies to love, however, is another matter entirely.
The film is beautiful, lyrical and troubling. The actors perform admirably, none so more than the non-professional Claire Drouot, Jean Claude Drouot's real-life wife playing his on-screen wife. (The children are their own children, too.) The script is deceptively simple, the scenes are largely quiet, and yet all the while there are important and substantial ideas being raised. Is love a feeling or a relationship? What do we owe ourselves and what do we owe our loved ones? Varda does not give you the answers, but the way she gives you the questions is marvellous.
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★ 8 / 10
I Want it All...
Xstal
You have a really gorgeous wife, young family, full of joy and love, a real alchemy, a job that you adore, great friends and colleagues, who wants more, life…
You have a really gorgeous wife, young family, full of joy and love, a real alchemy, a job that you adore, great friends and colleagues, who wants more, life is great, you've filled your plate, a happy state. A chance encounter leads to work for Émilie, she wants you to erect some shelves Sunday, opens curtains you push through, without a care for being true, are you so selfish, or is this just naivety. You profess to having love for your two girls, want to keep them both and cover them in pearls, but I wonder what you'd tell her, if your wife had her own fella, I'm sure she'd love you just as much, after a whirl.
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88%
TOMATOMETER
· 8 reviews
79%
AUDIENCE
· 500 ratings
7.6/10
12.3K
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Can anyone verified is a real movie or not