LA MOUSTACHE / Emmanuel Carrère (2005)

November 9th, 2006 by Scott Marks

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Moustache, La (2005)

Directed by: Emmanuel Carrère

Written by: Jérôme Beaujour, Emmanuel Carrère

Cast: Vincent Lindon,Emmanuelle Devos,Mathieu Amalric,Hippolyte Girardot,Cylia Malki,Macha Polikarpova,Fantine Camus,Frédéric Imberty,Brigitte Bémol,Denis Menochet,Franck Richard,Elizabeth Marre,Teresa Li,Au Hin Wai,Kwok Chan Chung

Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1

Running Time: 86 min.

Genres: Drama, Mystery

If the hair that you ripped from your head after seeing Cache has finally grown back, here is a new existential French suspense thriller that’s bound to leave you with an alopecia bouffant.

From its opening sights and sounds, a film should instantly set a tone and point of view to be followed and built upon over the course of however many minutes. Underneath La Moustache’s credits a distant light dances across waves at night. It will take a few reels before this watery image reappears. It comes back just about the same time you’ll begin to wonder whether or not these characters are insane, cause they’re certainly not in Siennes anymore.

Marc (Vincent Lindon), an upper-middle class architect, sits in a scalding bath wondering aloud, “What if I shaved my moustache off?” Agnes approves of Marc’s bristles; she assures her husband that “I don’t know you without it.” It’s a safe bet that a more loaded line of dialogue will not be delivered all year.

Not until a contemplative gaze in a mirror followed by total submersion in the tub does the purposely withheld opening title appear. We watch as Marc meticulously takes scissors, soap and razor to his upper lip. It’s a good thing that he remembers where he filed his old shaves. They will come in handy later on when Marc ransacks a trash bin in search of the discarded whiskers and his sanity.

Initially, Marc turns things into a game by doing his best to mask the recent deletion with sweatshirts and bath towels. Despite the fact that Agnes fully expects Marc to notice her “tarty” attire, she fails to acknowledge his new look. Even worse, when finally confronted she swears up and down that her husband never wore a moustache.

Close friends side with Agnes. A passport picture and dozens of vacation photos, which Agnes handles but never examines, are proof that a moustache once existed. Even a puzzled cop at a photo booth is quick to validate Marc’s claim. Is our hero going mad? Can one small action, no matter how thoroughly calculated, throw one man’s universe completely out of whack? Was Gaslight on Agnes’ Netfilx list?

This is novelist and screenwriter Emmanuel Carrere’s second directorial effort. (I must have been sick the week his first feature Return to Kotelnitch opened and it is not available on DVD.) Some were quick to complain that a film that clocks in at a little under the 90 minute mark shouldn’t drag.

In one hotly contested scene Marc repeatedly travels back and forth from one Hong Kong harbor to another. Those plot-junkies impatiently waiting for “something to happen” didn’t pick up on the filmmaker’s interpretation of a character desperate to find some continuum in his life.

After a second viewing several of the pieces still don’t add up, but that’s okay. La Moustache is all about character, paranoia, love and betrayal, madness, conspiracy theories, and just about everything but story. On those levels it’s a smashing suspense thriller. Just don’t try to make too much sense of it.

For a hair-raising good time, try your best to see this one on a double-bill with Fur.

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