Le Bonheur

Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur is a provocative story of infidelity and love covered in a swath of color and carried on by a piping Mozart score. Varda and the film received a generous amount of criticism for the film's take on infidelity and it's seeming ambivalent attitude towards it, and it's easy to see why even 40 years later.

The film offers many symbols and signs of the overall theme of infidelity, some glaringly obvious (close ups of various street signs emblazoned with the words "Temptation," "Mystery," or "Confidence"), while others work within the plot; the protaganist Francois' wife Therese is a seamstress that is working on a wedding gown early in the movie. When Francois meets an attractive postal worker, Emilie, and offers to install some shelves at her apartment, the viewer knows exactly where the story is going, even without prior knowledge of the film.

Except that when it comes, we're left with a strange emptiness. Mozart's strings keep piping along. The color remains bright and cheery. Francois comes home and plays with his children and makes love to his wife. He's smiling. No interior dialog. No sense of guilt, even privately.

What's wrong with this picture?

Indeed, the joyous score and vibrant color of the film almost seem disturbing after Francois' lovemaking sessions with Emilie. The color, which at first fit in perfectly with Francois and Therese's idealistic family life, now seem grossly out of place. The lack of any sense of remorse on Francois' part is near maddening.

Basically, it's all rather confusing.

Confusing, still, when Francois' wife meets a mysterious end by drowning. After Francois reveals the affair to her (complete with an excuse that makes about as much sense as the rest of the film, which in this case is actually perfect sense), she goes off on her own and disappears. Francois and the children look for her and find her dead. As Francois looks at the body of his wife, a quick clip replays over and over; the image of her struggling to escape. Was the death an accident or a suicide? Is the clip Francois trying to convince himself of on explanation? It is never explained, and, as is the case with some of the best films, is better off for it.

As I said, Varda came under fire for the way the film portrays these events, as it seems she is fulfilling a male fantasy of having the best of both worlds without consequence, but I wonder if that's her real intention. It almost seems as if Varda is trying to present these events in a different light to puzzle the audience. She offers very little in the way of visual cues of how we think we're supposed to feel about the story, and instead gives us a confounding story of unfaithfulness. In the end, we're left with a bittersweet, stale treat wrapped in a deceptively bright wrapper.