Mon homme (1996) - film review

Marie, a high-class prostitute, feels obliged to help out a filthy tramp she comes across one evening.  Lured by the promise of a free meal and a night of after-supper entertainment, the tramp, Jeannot, accepts Marie’s invitation back to her apartment.  After a particularly gratifying bout of love making, Marie makes Jeannot an offer he can’t refuse: to become her pimp.  Jeannot accepts, relishing the idea of abusing a woman and taking all her money.  The arrangement works for all concerned until Jeannot gets greedy and recruits a manicurist, Sarah, to work as prostitute number two…

Once more, director Bertrand Blier courts controversy and the wrath of the entire feminist movement with this anarchic black comedy.  With tongue welded firmly to cheek, Blier implies that women are so dependent on male dominance that they would go so far as to throw away all of their independence and humiliate themselves just for a bit of the rough stuff.   This blatantly misogynistic interpretation has earned the film no end of flack and a certain amount of hell-fire condemnation in some quarters but even the most cursory familiarity with Blier’s other work shows that the director is only having a dirty bit of fun.  After all, winding up trenchant feminists is one of the few pleasures left to the male sex in this so-called liberal world of misguided political correctness.

Mon homme may not be Blier’s most coherent or satisfying film, but it is entertaining and explores the relationship between men and women with a rare candour and more than a touch of masochistic irony.  Anouk Grinberg gives a gutsy performance as the prostitute who loves to be abused (don’t they all?) and manages to hold together a film which might otherwise have degenerated into a shabby mix of eroticism and cheap farce.  It is certainly not a film for all tastes, but for those who appreciates Bertrand Blier’s brand of warped black comedy it is well worth watching, although probably not in the company of a rampant feminist.

© James Travers 2004

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