Le Sens de l'humour (2014)
Directed by Marilyne Canto

Film Review

For her debut feature as a director, established actress Marilyne Canto draws on her own painful life experiences to deliver a sensitive, authentically crafted portrait of a menopausal woman who is prevented from reconstructing her life after a painful marital bereavement.  Le Sens de l'humour is a sequel of a kind to Fais de beaux rêves, the short film that won Canto a César in 2007 and in which she also appears in the lead role, alongside her real-life partner Antoine Chappey.  There is an obvious similarity with Maurice Pialat's film Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972) (another auto-biographical work), but whilst she achieves a near-approximation to Pialat's strikingly realist style, Canto manages to give her film a warmer female slant.  There is an undercurrent of wry humour that runs through the film, emphasising the fragility of the central characters and the absurdity of their precarious on-off relationship.  What Canto offers is not a conventional romantic comedy or a brutal piece of social realism in the manner of the Dardenne brothers, but something exactly midway between these two extremes - a sincere and touching slice of life, wistful but with a glimmer of a smile.

The plot similarities with Pialat's film are hard to miss.  A woman (admirably interpreted by Canto, an actress of considerable charm and ability) is seen struggling to rebuild her life after the sudden and presumably brutal death of her husband (the tragedy is only alluded to, en passant, in one brief flashback sequence that owes something to Robert Bresson).  She has a young son to bring up and he is obviously in need of a father figure, although he never admits as such.  The visibly strained relationship between mother and son is mirrored, and magnified tenfold, in the widow's affair with her new lover.  On the face if it, he would seem to be her ideal soul mate, but whilst she is clearly in love with him she has difficulty committing herself to the relationship. What ensues is a predictable tug-of-war of the emotions which is alternately pathetic and funny.

Despite the high quality of the acting, we never really get under the skin of the protagonists, and this is where the film comes undone.  Most of the narrative consists of the two pretty anonymous main characters meeting, making up and then parting abruptly - it is a relationship that is clearly going nowhere and yet neither appears capable of ending it.  Conflicting feelings draw them together and drive them apart, so that they end up looking like two weights on the end of a spring, trapped in a constant cycle of attraction and repulsion - until the spring breaks.  The moment of decision comes when the heroine finally discovers she is pregnant.  She cannot go on prevaricating anymore, and so she is forced to make her choice.  Here is a woman who makes Hamlet look rashly decisive.

Le Sens de l'humour is a film that succeeds in holding the attention (mainly on the strength of the performances) but it is frustratingly difficult to engage with at more than a very superficial level.  There are a number of scenes that hit home and belt you with an occasional emotional wallop - as you would expect of a film with two such dependable lead actors (Chappey is at his best and Canto is as magnetic as ever).  But too often the narrative just seems to lose focus and drift, and all you are left with is the impression of how utterly empty and rudderless the heroine's life is as she traverses the sterile no man's land after her husband's demise.  Boredom is cruelly contagious.

Ultimately, this feeling of unrelenting ennui infects the entire film and does a good job of eroding (or at least diminishing) our sympathies for the characters.  Canto's too self-conscious attempt to emulate Pialat, her determined reluctance to take a conventional course results in a film that is too vague, detached and alienating to be effective in engaging our emotions.  Like the characters it depicts, you are drawn to the film by its indefinable charms, yet you cannot commit to it, and in the end you coming away from it wondering why you bothered.  Yet, for all its shortcomings, Le Sens de l'humour is a first feature that shows some promise.  As well as being a great actress, Marilyne Canto clearly has some ability as a filmmaker and, more crucially, something meaningful to say about life.

Film Synopsis

Some years have passed since Elise lost her husband in tragic circumstances but the pain lingers and she is still struggling to rebuild her life.  She works in Paris as a guide in an art museum and shares a modest apartment with her ten-year-old son Léo who feels the absence of his father.  Recently, Elise has started seeing another man, Paul, who scrapes a living selling secondhand goods.  Although Elise and Paul are strongly attracted to one another their relationship remains a turbulent one.  Each has a need for the other's company, and yet Elise, still haunted by the loss of her husband, finds it hard to commit to another man.  In the end they realise they cannot go on like this.  But this is the moment when Elise finds she is pregnant...