Dry Cleaning

An interesting and somewhat mysterious tale of a middle aged couple who grow disillusioned with their dry cleaning business and find outlet with a cross dressing brother-sister-lover couple of performers. Their mutual obsession naturally leads to the demise of their relationships, businesses and ultimately their lives.

The script is a bit dry, and lacks the punch that the subject matter is capable of delivering. Near the final act it tries to catch up as the homosexual attraction between the young man and the older husband comes zooming out of nowhere. A good editor would've suggested they drop some kind of hint earlier on.

The abrupt and troubling ending leaves you satisfied.

In a small town in France, Nicole Kunstler (Miou-Miou) and her husband Jean-Marie Kunstler is a traditional French middle-class couple, bored with their years of marriage and running a small business of cleaning and ironing clothes with some financial difficulties. When they meet the bisexual Loic (Stanislas Merhar) working as drag in a night-club with his sister Marylin (Mathilde Seigner), the sexually dissatisfied Nicole feels a great sexual attraction for him. The couple brings the young man to live and work with them, in a weird relationship, and Nicole has an affair with Loic and becomes a happy person. This intriguing triangle of love has a tragic end. "Nettoyage à Sec" is almost an excellent romance. The screenplay begins very daring, but the solution for the love situation is very moralist and resolved in a tragic, but easy way. The cast has a great performance and the direction is very good, but the story deserved a better conclusion. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Lavagem a Seco" ("Dry Cleaning")

the idea is far to be now. the performances - decent. in fact, correct use of stereotype who was imposed by Teorema. the young seductive man. the wife remembering Madame Bovary. the husband on the top of solitude. provocative scenes and dialogues. not real surprising end. the only memory after few years after I saw it - the atmosphere. the ambiguous sexuality, the crisis of marriage and the last decision. and nothing more because the film is just occasion to intrigue, seduce and propose an idea who represents part of many couples fear.

It's a cinematic tradition: the handsome young man who insinuates himself into a household of boring bourgeois types and stirs things up. Terence Stamp did it in Teorema, Robert Forster in Reflections in a Golden Eye, Peter McEnery in Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation. Here, the young man is a bisexual who quickly wins the heart of a frustrated Miou-Miou and disturbs the dull, penny-pinching boss of a dry cleaners, Berling. The script and direction by Anne Fontaine are assured, but the ending may leave some viewers perplexed (it did me), as it seems to come out of nowhere.

Stanislas Merhar deserved the Most Promising Actor Cesar that he won as the pretty boy; you can readily see why the wife can't get enough of his caresses. Charles Berling often plays men who suffer in silence; he has a wonderful way of tightening his mouth that speaks volumes, and here he's very good as the husband.

Recently i watched some or many french movies about husband n wife relationship. i really dont understand or what i understand that what the hek is going on with french people? . or maybe its just movies. as movies represent its people too.

A movie about married couple with 2 kids and BOTH very busy with their dry cleaning business. seems normal till they enjoyed much in EXOTIC club. and then another young stud character came in their lives + home. which turns everything upside.

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the thing i dont understand is , a normal French married couple SUDDENLY invite a GIGLO to their business + home + lives after soo many years of marriage. even that young giglo has its own intentions to that couple after being dumped by his own gf. even a husband knows from a start that he WANTS and is getting into his wife pants but still OK with it ? . and that french wife? . she didnt think about her own children n family and suddenly want to leave everything for that guy. that is kinda too much.

never ever invite a horny young guy into home where a bored housewife is already on heat.