L'Économie du couple (2016)
Directed by Joachim Lafosse

Film Review

It's a sign of our times that couples who have fallen out of love and would like to split up frequently cannot afford to do so financially and so end up being forced into cohabiting, with the result that their home becomes a battle zone.  This is the all-too-familiar scenario that Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse concerns himself with in his latest film, L'Économie du couple.  This claustrophobic drama depicting a man and woman from two different social strata (he is the muscly prole, she the bourgeois doll) has echoes of the director's earlier huis-clos drama À perdre la raison (2012), in which a woman is driven to multiple infanticide by her oppressive domestic circumstances.  This latest Lafosse offering isn't quite so bleak but it does offer a portrait of a disintegrating relationship that is harrowingly convincing and rather moving.

Playing the lead roles are two contrasting actors who have rarely been as well-served on the screen as they are here by Lafosse's intelligent, insightful and true-to-life script.  Cédric Kahn is better known as a director - of such acclaimed films as L'Ennui (1998) and Roberto Succo (2001) - but he is also a formidable actor, always at his best in serious auteur fare such as the kind that Joachim Lafosse specialises in.  With his screen presence and subtlety as a performer, it's hard to comprehend why Kahn hasn't already achieved star status and remains a virtual unknown, unlike his co-star Bérénice Béjo who, following her success in Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2011), has seen her career go from strength to strength.  The effortlessly glamorous Béjo and the much earthier Kahn make an unlikely couple but both actors succeed in convincing us that, before they declared open war on each other, their characters once had an intense, loving relationship, the remains of which are still apparent in their perfect house and their perfect children.

In this authentic depiction of a couple struggling to stay together for the benefit of their separate bank balances there are strong echoes of the class war, the seemingly interminable struggle between those who have the money (the capitalists) and those who do all the work (the proletariat).  The characters played by Béjo and Kahn are obvious symbols of the two sides in this eternal combat and their private battle visibly reflects the wider one, between the employers and the workers, that rages with ever-increasing enmity today.  The film doesn't dwell excessively on this connection but it lends a fitting topicality to the drama.  L'Économie du couple has less of the shock value of Lafosse's previous films, which tend to encroach on the more perverse aspects of human nature, and this is to its benefit.  What the director serves up this time is a more plausible slice of life that offers a fresh perspective on a depressingly familiar situation.

Film Synopsis

Marie and Boris have been together for fifteen years.  They have two daughters and have enjoyed a loving relationship, in spite of their different social backgrounds.  But recently they have drifted apart and the time has come for them to go their separate ways.  Unfortunately, Boris has no money of his own and is having difficulty finding work to support himself, so he has no choice but to go on living in the family house which Marie bought with her own money.  Since Boris undertook all of the renovations to the house Marie can hardly turn him out, so they agree to go on living together until they can sell the house.  Living in such proximity, each bitterly resentful of the other, causes the ex-couple's relationship to deteriorate even further.  Marie finds she can no longer bear her ex-partner's infantile behaviour; Boris resents her financial independence.  When they get round to selling the house they must decide how to divide up the money from the sale.  This merely throws more fat onto the flames of their increasing animosity...