L’Homme de sa vie (2006) - film review

As they do every year, husband and wife Frédéric and Frédérique spend their summer holidays with family and friends at their large country house in Provence.  They appear to make the ideal couple, happily married, with a good income and adorable children.  What more could they ask for?  Then, one fateful evening all that changes.  The couple invite a neighbour, Hugo, to dinner.  Hugo’s openness about his homosexuality seems to fascinate Frédéric and they spend the entire night together, talking about love and relationships.   In the days that follow, Frédérique notices a gulf opening up between herself and her husband, just as a powerful bond of affection develops between him and Hugo...

Zabou Breitman’s second feature as a director may not have the searing emotional intensity of her first, Se souvenir des belles choses (2001), but it is nonetheless a beautifully composed piece that offers a thoughtful meditation on life, love and desire.  In keeping with the central theme of her film, Breitman eschews the formal linear approach for one that is more free-flowing and abstract, a stylisation that can best be described as impressionistic.  The loosely structured elliptical narrative flitters between reality and imagination, alternating between a sunny portrait of family life in a lush provençal setting and sombre moments of conflict and reflection that are shot virtually in monochrome.   It is the stark visual poetry of this film that gives it its coherence and emotional resonance, subtly conveying something of the exquisite pain and pleasure of love without going anywhere near the usual devices of melodrama. 

The title L’Homme de sa vie turns out to be highly ironic, playing on the ambiguity of the word sa, meaning his or her.  The man in question is both the dutiful husband, Frédéric, and the gay interloper, Hugo.  These two characters (who are played to perfection by Bernard Campan and Charles Berling) have diametrically opposed philosophies over what constitutes a happy life.  Frédéric is of the view that marriage is the ideal, but Hugo is equally convinced that man is born to be free and can never be happy in the marital straitjacket.  Frédéric turns out not to be as strait-laced (or even straight) as he first appears - the fact that his wife is named Frédérique is perhaps a pointer to his sexual ambiguity - and likewise Hugo has more to him than meets the eye.

Although Frédéric and Hugo initially appear to be polar opposites, they soon strike up a friendship, and an intimacy develops which turns into an intense bond of love.  As this happens, Frédéric begins to lose interest in his wife, who instinctively senses that her marriage is beginning to fall apart.  Meanwhile, Hugo has problems of his own and must decide whether he should go to the deathbed of his father, the father who brutally disowned him when he revealed he was gay.  With immense sensitivity and compassion, Zabou Breitman paints a remarkably authentic portrait of male fragility, showing us a side to masculinity which is very rarely seen in the cinema.  Even in these enlightened days, the vast majority of films tend to portray the male sex as invulnerable and emotionally underdeveloped, probably because most films are directed by men and this is how men wish to be seen.

L’Homme de sa vie is a beguiling and refreshingly up-front film about the complexities of human desire and human relationships, but it is also strangely elusive.  It is like a dream that overwhelms you completely and yet, when you try to understand, it proves as resistant to interpretation as a tannoy announcement on the London Underground.  Being a fairly abstract piece, it is possible to read into it almost what you wish, and that is certainly part of its charm.   Breitman asks a question - who is happier: the married man or the carefree bachelor? - but the answer we get is ambiguous.   We see Frédéric and Frédérique stuck in a passionless marriage, but with the consolation afforded by parenthood.  We see Hugo, free as a bird, but condemned to a life of one-night stands and suppers for one.  Life is never perfect.  There is no happy ever after.  Just moments of joy and sadness, whichever path you tread.

© James Travers 2010

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