Primo, Prima

If you have a playful sense of humor and enjoy films with an early Fellini (celebration of life-quirky characters) flavor, you should make it a point to watch "Cousin Cousine". Released in 1975, on the surface this is just an off-beat love story about two middle-aged "cousins-by marriage" who are drawn to each other by a shared playfulness. These kindred spirits awaken in each other a zestful and irreverent attitude toward life that distances them from their large (and somewhat strange) extended family. They want to experience as much of life as possible, the man has made it a practice to change professions (not just jobs) every three years so that nothing gets stale. They are very open about their affair, reasoning that the rest of the family will think the worst anyway. Not surprisingly their affair also distances them from their respective spouses, who do not share their fun-loving and irreverent attitudes.

The lovers are played by Christine Barrault (nominated for an Oscar) and Victor Lanoux. Although they are fun and likable characters, most of the comedy in this film emanates from the performances of the actors who play their respective spouses. Guy Marchand plays Barrault's husband as a cranky and pathetic Cassanova whose philandering lifestyle is cramped by his inability to cope with his wife's sudden infidelity. Marie-France Pisier, as Lanoux's neurotic airhead wife, subtly steals each scene in which she appears; when a character introduces themselves with the revelation that the only time they have ever been happy was during hypnotherapy, you know that interesting moments are ahead. And for what it is worth Pisier is breathtakingly beautiful.

The affair causes the Marchand and Pisier characters a great deal of pain for most of the film, but by the end they have pretty much adjusted to everything. Marchand has resumed his pursue of other women and Pisier has returned to her main source of pleasure-therapy. Marchand's regeneration occurs with his first playful moment, he mounts a knife (fake) in his back and staggers into the living room to the shock of the assembled relatives. While Pisier's regeneration is the best scene of the film. Alone and fully clothed in the bathroom, she half-heartedly tries to slit her wrist with a razor blade and falls backward into the empty tub, which she unexpectedly finds a pleasant and relaxing place to think. And how appropriate since the bathtub is a device we associate with privacy, purgation, relaxation, openness, and regeneration.

They say that all films are political and "Cousin Cousine" is no exception. Films have the power to deconstruct the traditional values of society and this love story is also a social commentary on the hypocrisy and double-standards of 1970's western middle class culture. And while pointing out these issues it offers psycho-political messages that each viewer can relate to personally and specifically. The theme is that each day should be a celebration of life, experience, and growth.

The grandfather is shown as someone whose long life has given him a real perspective. He is pleased when his teenage granddaughter reveals that she has discovered sex and found it to be wonderful, delighted that she has found something see finds wonderful and amused because her joy is so contrary to the nihilism she had been embracing. He is self-sufficient, the widowed grandmother from the other side of the family enjoys being with him but realizes that he is perfectly comfortable and prefers living alone. He is disturbed by the failure of the family to take any significant time from their lives to mourn his brother's passing.

The strange antics of the adults in this extended family are a source of great amusement to the observant children. The carnival music score gives the many extended and flowing group shots a pleasing circus side-show attraction flavor.

Note how the film opens with one of families driving to the wedding; parents in the front seat, brother and little sister in the back seat. The parents are agitated and scolding, the children calm and attentive to the experience of the moment. They go out of the scene with the little sister sliding over to be closer to her brother and smiling in adoration. The same little observant girl appears in close-up periodically throughout the film, smiling in amusement at the antics of everyone around her. The film ends with the little girl smiling serenely out the window as she watches the lovers leave on their motorcycle.

French cinema is perhaps the only cinema in the world where a man can cheat on a stunning woman like Marie-France Pisier and it looks fairly "normal" and believable. "Cousin, Cousine" does not break much new ground thematically, but it does have plenty of charm and wit, as well as a wonderful cast (especially the two leads, Marie-Christine Barrault and Victor Lanoux). It is also pointed in its observations about male hypocrisy and double-standards, probably the contribution of female co-screenwriter Daniele Thompson. Nominated for several Oscars, this dramedy belongs in the same period of popular French films as "La Cage Aux Folles", although it is considerably more low-key. *** out of 4.

This movie was great. It was shown on Bravo cable channel here in America. I was a little buzzed from a night out and came back and found this flic on.

I got it right at the beginning and was taken by the charming chemistry between the two cousins and the very sly and low-key nature of the relationship. That was a great part of the appeal of the movie for me. I also liked the two lead performances. Both were quite quietly confident and did not feel the need to throw themselves at the viewer in order to be seen.

I enjoyed the fact that they thought about how best to get a rise out of their significant others. Well, I thought that was interesting and it showed two thoughtful people considering how best to achieve their goal and not totally consumed by lust. The reactions of the two effected spouses were very funny too. The two who were in the affair were very funny as they tried to contrive more and more ways to get back at their spouses. It was very interesting and not as glossed over as Hollywood films in which it takes the two cheating partners about 17.23 seconds to jump in the sack together. This movie played itself out and one could see how they moved from a platonic to a full relationship.

"Cousin, Cousine" is certainly the most cheerful film where two marriages are being broken, maybe because it chose to deal with the exception rather than the norm, when the right romance comes after wedding vows, or maybe because writer Daniele Thompson foresaw that we would secretly cheer for those who refused to commit to dead-end relationships for commitment's sake or because they fear the avenging public eye. It's not the secrecy of the affair that provides the film's unique zest but its lack thereof.

And so Marthe (Marie-Christine Barrault) and Ludovic (Victor Lanoux) are both in their thirties (Ludovic closer to the forty mark) and meet at the point of their lives where a meaning is sought and heart commands to be filled with something that transcends family diktats, how ironic that it all starts in a family banquet. And never has infidelity been portrayed in such a light way, light as a something truly relieved from the burden of guilt and the necessity of concealing, although it is prevalent in the first weeks of the relationship, it is less as a hindrance than a way to preserve something occasional sunshine in rather cloudy lives.

And it's the tour de force of director Jean-Charles Tacchela to tackle the relationship in such a way that we never feel inclined to condemn the sight of a man having an affair, indulging in a pastry binge-eating, humming a classical piece of music or going swimming, not skin-dipping like in usual romances, but in the local swimming pool as to already taint their relationship with social visibility. Even their children don't disapprove their relationships, the opening wedding sequence having already established them as fully aware of the adults' little misbehaviors (after all, everyone's part of the same hypocrisy).

And while the leading couple floats on a cloud of tenderness, most of the laughs are provided by Marthe's cheating husband Pascal (Guy Marchand) and Ludovic's neurotic sleep-cure addict girlfriend Karine (Marie-France Pisier). Pascal is a delusional macho lover who, after a long sequence where he dumped his mistresses one by one, he comes home triumphantly waiting for Marthe to applaud his redemption, she doesn't even dignify it with a smile. As a more complex character, it's the pert, hippie-like and neurotic Karine who steals the show with such gusto that she could have been a full Woody Allen character, Pisier is so hilarious she'd make you forget how beautiful she is in a young Adjani way. Now, there are moments where subtlety deserts the story but not so long that it is distracting... and just when you think the film borders into darker territories, you realize it's only setting you up for a big laugh. "Cousin, Cousine" tactfully spares us the whole drama and one scene involving a suicide attempt had the kind of predictable outcomes that can only be considered comical genius.

Now, would the liaison have been more acceptable had the two been happy or their partners not be unfaithful in the first place? In the first case, it wouldn't have made much sense, in the second the director finds a little pirouette by making them meet before they understand what Pascal and Karine were up too. The romance wasn't premeditated and we believe it because their lines of dialogues flow so naturally with the casual frivolity we carefully insert in our many flirtations with strangers, for the kicks, especially in these screen-less times where nothing could be recorded (some kids were still sneaky enough to take play paparazzi on you). Lanoux plays Ludovic with the quiet charisma of the man who doesn't weigh everything he says and embraces his contradiction, he criticizes family reunions but admits he enjoys them, he doesn't value his job and says he needs to change one every three years, his volatile life speaks less about himself than his total honesty about it.

And there's something so graceful in Barrault's performance, in the way she literally gives herself to Ludovic, that makes for a compelling performance full of little touches such as a smile or a maternal desire to clip his toenails, Barrault would be nominated for Best Actress the same year than "Rocky". And in a way, the couple reminded me of that quote from about Rocky and Adrian: "she's got gaps, I've got gaps, together, we fill gaps". What gaps could they possibly have? Well, the film is not interested in delving into them, what it does however is present them as two members of an ordinary family gathering for the usual occasions: wedding banquets, funerals, Christmas parties, where as usual in France, it's all about drinking, having fun and partying, things so common that one can only welcome whatever will break that routine. And "Cousin, Cousine" provides a very sociological slice of French bourgeois life in the 70s in a time where divorces and mixed families were uncommon but not rarities.

Long story short, what "Cousin Cousin" accomplishes is to make you believe in a love story where it's not about sex or lust, it's not about petty vengeance, just about mutual attraction and two people sharing common pleasure in togetherness... the whole thing enrobed with a gallery of sympathetic characters who have all in common that they will all remind us of someone we know. And watching Marthe and Ludovic together, no matter how disapproving we are, we can't blame them from living their romance to the fullest and when they take a hotel room for an afternoon and then it turns into a night, it doesn't just feel real, it feels exhilarating. The greatest delights come from their shamelessness and how disconcerting it is for their entourage.

And the final shot is just like "The Graduate" except this time with grown-ups who know (and we know) they've made the right choice, the puzzlement of the family behind the doors might show disbelief but maybe a secret envy...

This popular French comedy deservedly received a lot of international acclaim and awards on its original release and still pleases when watched today almost 40 years later; apart from the Cesars and the Golden Globes, the film received 3 Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film (which it lost to Ivory Coast's BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR – which I also caught up with just now), Best Actress (Marie-Christine Barrault losing out to NETWORK's Faye Dunaway) and Best Original Screenplay (again won by NETWORK). Interestingly enough, in both the Actress and Screenplay categories, there were two foreign nominees apiece: Barrault and Liv Ullman in Ingmar Bergman's FACE TO FACE and, for Screenplay, Lina Wertmuller's SEVEN BEAUTIES and, incidentally, both directors made the cut among the final 5 nominees for Best Direction!

Barrault and her female co-star Marie-France Pisier (a Cesar winner herself here and, for my money, more deserving of an Oscar nod than the latter) are the only familiar names in a sympathetic cast; even director Tacchella seems to have been a one-hit wonder. Bafflingly, COUSIN COUSINE had been 'announced' as an upcoming Criterion title since the earliest days of DVD (in fact, the copy I watched culled from a US TV screening sports the tell-tale "Janus Film" header before the film's opening credits) but this release never came to pass! For what it is worth, this is one of the earliest examples of a Gallic success being revamped for Hollywood consumption, when it was remade by Joel Schumacher as COUSINS (1989) with Ted Danson, Isabella Rossellini and Sean Young.

In any case, the plot line is simple enough: an extended family is reunited for two weddings and a funeral (anticipating the popular 1994 British farce FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL by 20 years!) and a series of infidelities come to the fore between two particular couples. Barrault's chronically womanizing husband (Guy Marchand) had been cheating on her with (among many others) the vulnerable Pisier, whose own restless spouse (Victor Lanoux) starts an initially secretly platonic but subsequently openly passionate affair with Barrault. There are several memorably delightful episodes which add to the charm of the film: during the wedding reception of Barrault's mother, the groom proposes to sing but when vetoed, proceeds to indulge in "mooning" (baring his buttocks in public); when Marchand decides after the opening wedding ceremony to mend his philandering ways, he is shown running from one flame to the next to end their relationship...ultimately being thrown off a bus by the burly female driver!; at the second marriage, Marchand again keeps getting into fisticuffs with the bridegroom's father, a former business partner who had defrauded him, etc. The whole is set to a jaunty musical accompaniment courtesy of yet another obscure element, one Gerard Anfosso.