Movie Review – Le Bonheur

Le Bonheur (1965)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

Translated into “happiness,” Le Bonheur is a pointed satire about marriage. Like good satire should, it is nuanced & subtle. I think American audiences have come to define satire as “parody” or just broad comedy when it is, in fact, building a case through narrative to support a particular point of view. There’s mockery here, but it’s not the kind that bellows loudly and makes a nuisance of itself. Agnes Varda was a filmmaker with such a strong filmmaking sensibility that she could unfold her story with finesse. It’s a feminist reading of male privilege with the husband as the central character. The female characters are supporting figures, but that makes it all the more damning and brutally hilarious.

Francois is a young, handsome woodworker employed by his uncle. Lives quite a happy rustic life with his wife, Therese, and their two little children, Pierrot and Gisou. The family enjoys going out to the country on the weekends, lounging in a pastoral setting, and reveling in the comforts of their simple life. Francois eventually meets Emilie, a local postal worker, and they begin flirting immediately. She’s around the age of his wife but single with an apartment all to herself. The flirting continues until Francois & Emilie are having an affair. She knows he’s married but doesn’t ask too many questions at the start. Eventually, they come, and Emilie wants to know where she stands. Francois can convince her he’s just ‘so full of love’ and that they aren’t doing anything wrong. But such a fraud can only go on for so long before there are consequences.

There’s this reactionary way of thinking I see many of my fellow Americans approach challenging films with. Once upon a time, I had very similar reactions. They see a character react in a way that doesn’t gel with the constant flood of “stand up for yourself” ideology that is heavily promoted in the States. There is a moment in this film where Therese decides to ask Francois why he has been so pleased lately, noting his constant absence while he goes behind her back to sleep with another woman. Francois is very open, admitting to the affair but feeding his wife some bullshit about polyamory which, if you’ve ever spoken to someone in a healthy poly relationship, you would know Francois is an asshole. 

Therese’s reaction to this will not be what you might expect in a contemporary setting. The film has spent time ensuring we understand how Therese sees herself concerning Francois, and it could easily be labeled as a “trad wife.” She sees her purpose in the relationship as providing happiness to her husband. That comes in the form of having & caring for his children, making all his meals, being available for sex whenever he pleases, etc. So, when her husband explains he’s sleeping with another woman, Therese is very demure. We can see the slight tension in her, but she complies, hugging her husband and telling him that she supports whatever makes him happy. I won’t spoil where the next scene goes, but it shows how Therese’s internal pain had to emerge in one way or another, and it’s devastating…to the audience, at least. Maybe not Francois.

Varda has managed to recreate the sensation of being a woman & being boxed out of expressing your wants & needs to a man. Therese & Emilie both seem uncomfortable when they want to talk seriously about things with Francois. When Emilie starts asking questions about Francois’ marriage early in the affair, he delivers a rambling monologue full of bullshit, filibustering his way into her bed. Emilie lives in a society where she has been trained both overtly and covertly to exist as an object of pleasure for men. This is why she and Therese dress and behave the way they do when in public & the company of men. They desire more and have strong opinions, but they have rarely seen the other women they know do that.

While a modern film like Don’t Worry Darling tries to communicate these same themes, it does so clunkily. There’s no subtlety in that picture, nothing beyond a moderate technical prowess. There is no humanity there. Varda understood that to fully communicate the suffering women endure from men, you can’t simply make a film from a woman’s perspective and show her suffering. Instead, you make the film from the man’s perspective and display his arrogance & absurdity. Varda is early in developing her feminism here; she would say that her time in the States in the late 60s/early 70s, meeting members of the Black Panther Party, helped to radicalize & shape her feminism into what it became. In Le Bonheur, I can also see Varda reacting to conservative political ideals in France that were the same in post-war America. The institutions needed people to return to business as usual, but such monumental events awakened people to the truth. It is impossible to return when you have seen reality; the veil is pierced. 

Varda is disgusted with Francois’ cliche on top of everything else. Not only is he a cheating rat, but he sees himself as so much more intelligent than these women. Heavy-handed metaphors relating to nature are his favorite things to spit out, telling Emilie that Therese is like “a sturdy plant” and his mistress is “an animal set free.” None of this means anything; he thinks he can speak flowery phrases, and the women will be charmed and shut up. They do, for a time. Varda is also not going to hand us a feel-good empowerment ending that isn’t earned. Le Bonheur’s conclusion is nasty, and it is meant to sting. 

The final shot of the film dripped with horror from my perspective. The Mozart pieces that scored the film now take a much darker tone. The verdant spring & summer of the field and forest have become autumnal oranges & red. Varda’s beloved sunflowers are dried and dead. There is still a family, yes, but the audience would rightly see it as a perversion. A wound has been left ignored, and it seems absolutely nobody cares. Everyone has moved on. Le Bonheur is not a film that seeks to make people feel happy & hopeful; it wants to lay out the experience of women: how they are seen as interchangeable and quickly forgotten.