Thomas est amoureux (2000) - film review

Thomas, 32, is the victim of chronic agoraphobia and hasn’t left his apartment in eight years.  His only contact with the outside world is via his visiophone, which keeps him in touch with his mother, his therapist and his insurance agent.  The one intimate relationship he has is with a computer-generated paramour.  His love life takes an unexpected turn when his therapist gets him to join a virtual dating agency and his insurance agent tells him that, because of his handicap, he qualifies for a special kind of home help, in the form of a prostitute.   Thomas suddenly finds he has two women in his life: Mélodie, an aspiring video poet, and Eva, a state prostitute.  But will either of them draw Thomas out of his solitary world...?

This is a remarkable first film from Belgian director Pierre-Paul Renders, startlingly original in both its concept and its realisation, and so relevant to contemporary society (ironically more so now than when it was first released).  The film is both a dark tragicomic exploration of the torment of solitude and also a stark warning of the dangers of living in a virtual world.  It’s also a rather moving love story, with a very human dimension.

The approach that Renders uses is daringly experimental but so perfect for the story he has to tell.  It’s basically an on-going conversation between Thomas and the various characters he sees on his "visiophone" (a kind of Web-Cam).  We hear Thomas talking, but we never see him (except fleetingly in the final shot); all we see are the images on the visiophone – which are mostly single characters speaking directly to camera.  It takes a while to get used to this unusual narrative style, but once you’re in, you’re hooked.  The genius of this approach is that it forces the spectator into Thomas’s world, and you do get a horrible sense of being trapped, like a chick unable to break out of its shell.

The film paints a grim warning about where we may be heading as a society as we all live increasing virtual lives, thanks to our ever-growing dependence on the internet, video-conferencing, computer games, online chatrooms and the like.   We are spending less of our time in the real world, and more of our time in its virtual alternative, Cyberspace.   It’s not too fanciful to suggest that within a generation most of those living in the West will be locked in virtual cocoons like the central character in this film.  Two of our best friends – the home computer and the internet – may well end up becoming our mortal Hell, a self-induced solitary confinement in which human beings manage to live without any kind of physical contact, a kind of conscious non-life.

What is most appealing about Thomas est amoureux is the intelligence and sensitivity that has gone into both the script and the direction.  The humour has a razor sharp satirical edge, but there’s also a lot of humanity in what we see and hear.  There’s a real poignancy as we see Thomas struggle against his phobia and try to reach out and make contact with another human soul, which is all the more potent when we realise that this could be our future.  With the demise of the nuclear family, the gradual breakdown of social cohesion and our willingness to embrace clean virtual relationships as a substitute for messy real ones, this could well be the shape of things to come...

© James Travers 2007

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