La Maîtresse en maillot de bain (2002) - film review

In a provincial French town, three thirty-something men are without work but find solace in their friendship.  The bond that keeps them together is a graffiti sketch of their schoolteacher in a swimming costume, which they painted on a wall when they were children and which they now religiously protect.  They haven’t much else to do.  Since he abandoned his family Jean seems to be living a second childhood; Eric will do anything to get a job, but his efforts have proven fruitless; Karim has a diploma but he too cannot find work.  Things take a bizarre turn for the three men when, one day, Jean steals a film camera...

For his first full-length film, director Lyèce Boukhitine made the unusual – and daring – step of combining two of the most clearly defined genres in cinema: social realism and crime-thriller.  The idea smacks of genius and certainly has some mileage but the result is not totally satisfactory.   The contrived nature of the plot’s thriller strand, with its B-movie stereotypical characterisation, cuts painfully across the grain of the social realist background.  However, excellent performances from the three male leads and an innovative cinematic style make it a memorable and entertaining film.

There are some similarities with Peter Cattaneo’s The Full Monty (1997).  Both films feature a group of thirty-year old men who, finding themselves trapped in a desperate situation of unemployment and near-poverty, end up being propelled into a seedy world which is way outside their experience.  Boukhitine’s film is less adventurous than Cattaneo’s – only one of the three main characters wants to go “all the way” in the new life that he is offered, and even that turns out to be a partial red herring.  The black comedy works to the film’s advantage, strangely helping to make the characters more believable, more human, even if large swathes of the the plot aren’t remotely convincing.

© James Travers 2004

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