CIFF Diary: La Moustache

 

There may be no fantasy more commonly ingrained in us than that of physical reconstruction - of making over and starting over and, essentially, getting over the gulf between who we are and who we think we deserve to be. The most recent cultural manifestation of this common thirst for self-renovation is the string of "reality" makeover shows – Extreme Makeover, The Swan; to a slightly different degree, the "life makeover" shows like Made, Pimp my Ride, and EM: Home Edition; and on some level even American Idol – all of which are structured around the climactic reveal of the new self. And whilst the "stunning reveal" may be the logical, necessary conclusion of the rebirth fantasy, there's no after without the before – the New You only stuns because memory of the Old You still lingers. The makeover only makes its impression in relief.

When Marc (Vincent Lindon) shaves off his image-defining facial hair in Emmanuel Carrère's La Moustache, he waits until his wife has gone to the store. His eyes twinkle with the prospect of surprising her, and when he hears her on the stairs, he playfully hides his face, first behind a towel, then behind her own back. But Agnes doesn't notice that Marc has changed, and when the couple go out to dinner, three more friends fail to recognize Marc's transformation. Marc silently seethes through the meal, quietly livid over the lack of recognition. When he finally presses Agnes on it that night on the way home, she thinks he's joking. "You've never had a moustache!" she insists.


We know, and he knows, that this simply isn't true – we saw him wearing a moustache, at the beginning of the film, and we saw him shave it off. We even watched him hint at the transformation beforehand, asking Agnes what she'd think of him with a clean-shaven face. Agnes' response was that she couldn't imagine such a thing. But all of Marc's friends, when confronted with the issue, insist that he's joking, that he's playing some kind of trick on them – for ten, fifteen, twenty years, they all say, you've never had a moustache. The refusal of all around him to acknowlege his physical transformation throws Marc into a psychological tailspin, and La Moustache is a fascinating film while he's spiraling downward. The problem is, he never quite gets back up.
 
It's not just Agnes who doesn't notice – it's his coworkers, the guy at the coffee shop on the corner – everyone thinks Marc is mad to suggest that he ever wore facial hair. The stress first drives him to resume smoking, and then to go to some length to prove what he believes is the truet. Finally Marc is forced to flee what, in his paranoia, he's determined is a plot against him. Just leaving aside the film's extraneous plot contortions for a moment, one can easily understand why Marc might be pissed. Lindon, Valérie Lemercier's traffic-jam-lover from Claire Denis' Friday Night, is a reasonably good-looking man with facial hair; without it, he's a completely different person. Post-shave, he looks slimmer, younger, maybe even richer. He seems to wear clothes better, and he walks with more purpose, a more concrete sense of self. It does seem as though he's found his perfect physical self – but what good is any of that if the one person whose opinion matters to him doesn't acknowlege it?

But La Moustache is both confusing and confused. Based on Carrere's own novel of the same name, the film doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a psychological thriller or a gentle meditation on self and other and love. It could have been both, and for the first hour, it seems to be. About two-thirds of the way through, Marc writes a postcard to his wife, which in part reads, "Without your eyes, I see nothing." This is a fairly profound idea about the way we react to, and behave under, the gaze of our loved ones, and Carrère gives it plenty of space. In fact, it's the last literal idea before the film launches into its interminable final act. Presumably to cloud the issue of what, exactly, is going on within Marc's reality, Carrère has him ride every ferry in Hong Kong in what certainly feels like realtime. At this point the film starts to lose momentum considerably, just when it should be picking it up. The inevitable almost-resolution of Marc's dilemma feels resoundingly "so what" as a result. La Moustache sadly ends feeling like a waste of a fascinating concept.

But, man, that first hour ...