The film is titled Le Bonheur or ‘Happiness’ in translation, and it’s filled with exactly that. In fact, as far as I recall, there’s only one stretch of the film where the characters express any sadness.
Le Bonheur is Agnes Varda’s third feature film. It was also her first colour film and colour is definitely used. The visuals of this film are just so sunny: natural light, impressionist references, flowers, flowers and more flowers.
However, make no mistake, it is daylight horror. The ragged, unorthodox editing style assures the viewer of this constantly. On top of the stylistic editing, the choice of soundtrack is also a tonal tip-off. The film opens with the ‘Fugue’ section of Mozart’s ‘Adagio & Fugue’. It’s a particularly off-putting piece to hear when idyllically watching a field of sunflowers, only to be jumpcut to the same foreboding close-up of one particular sunflower. There’s no real visual threat, but the combination of score and editing says ‘something isn’t right here’ and that carries throughout the film.
The affair narrative is eerily straightforward: Francois (Jean-Claude Drouot) is in an adulterous affair with the postal clerk Emilie (Marie-France Boyer), but assures both women involved that he loves them both equally. His affection toward his wife (Claire Drouot) doesn’t show any reservation or dissatisfaction when the affair is instigated.
I’d argue this lack of agency or conflict is what makes the film both absurd and terrifying. The surreality of the affair is largely helped by the performances of the central family unit, played by real couple Jean Claude-Drouot and his wife Claire Drouot and their actual children. The real chemistry and love translates from the actor’s real-world connection and it makes everything all the more creepy.
Letterboxd has marketed this film under the tagline “Only a Woman Could Dare To Make This Film”. That’s an apt descriptor. Allied with a subsection full of solely male contemporaries, Varda offered a cerebral element to her female characters’ tragedies that other French New Wave directors often traded for spectacle. It’s not that she says any of her sentiments on femininity directly; it’s the perspective.
In fact, one of the film’s key features is its openness. Events transpire, the characters look indiscriminately happy with their circumstances, and Varda’s camera simply records. We aren’t nudged into any particular conclusion; the film puts its faith in our own moral code. We, the audience, know it’s wrong.
Varda portrays with so little, the hypocritical nature of men who cheat. The combination of beautiful settings and sensual performances echoes Francois’s insistence that loving two women is just ‘more of a good thing’, but it all feels too illogical to be believed. It’s a timeless conflicting narrative—a man known for loving his wife is unfaithful. He proclaims ‘I have not done anything wrong.’ (next up: fork found in kitchen).
The strange atmosphere of luminous domestic bliss and romantic intimacy reads as fantasy, and it almost is. It is the fantasy that the husband can have whatever woman he chooses and involved parties will simply be happy that he has more to be happy about. The film just puts forth that eventually, autumn comes.
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