Title: La Moustache (The Mustache)
Year: 2005
Genre: Drama, Mistery
Writer: Jèrôme Beaujour, Emmanuel Carrère (novel), Emmanuel Carrère (written by)
Runtime: 87min
Cast: Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Macha Polikarpova, Hippolyte Girardot, Cylia Malki, Fantine Camus
Produc.: Les Films de Tournelles, Pathé Renn Productions, France 3 Cinéma, Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), Cofimage 16, Uni Etoile 2, Région lle-de-France, Procirep, Canal+, Fondation GAN pour le Cinéma, TPS Star
In The Mustache, sitting in the tub, Marc (Vincent Lindon) asks his wife (Emmanuelle Devos) what does she thinks of him shaving his mustache, which he has been using for quite long.
Emmanuel Carrère, director of this film, makes us clear his intention of not extending too long on presentations, and goes straight to the point. So then we hear, straight away Marc´s voice, who from the tub consults his wife on a possible change of look. Agnès, meanwhile, replies him only vaguely, not giving him a yes or a no, and going on errands. Then, Marc decides to give it a try.
Agnès comes back later, for her husband to have fun in silence. When putting on his shoes he prevents Agnès to see the change, and after her shower, Marc holds the towel up, leaving part of his face hidden. They stop in front of the mirror, where Marc waits to see his wife´s gesuture, when she notices what he has done, but that, that does not happen. Nor does she say anything in the elevator or in the car, when that night they go to the house of their friends, Serge (Mathieu Amalric) and Nadia (Macha Polikarpova), who also, do not say anything.
The worst, however, is yet to come. Because Marc vents on his wife the anger that he has been building up, until, in bed, Agnes is forced to call her friends. Late at night she receives from them the confirmation that, for the last fifteen years, Marc has never had a mustache.
But the string of unreal situations does not end there. Marc coworkers also do not notice his shaved, although they realize when he smoks again. As if the madness only revolved around his facial hair.
Marc takes new pictures of himself and then asks a stranger to have a look a them, along with the one on his ID. The woman immediately points out what looks different, so now Marc understands even less, what is happens.
Following this, what could be better than to look up for the pictures of his trip to Bali, as an evidence of his sanity. Seeing his album he is relevied to confirm that he is sane. Nonetheless, at the moment of showing them to Agnès she pays him little attention, and I would like to know why, but really, WHY?, he did not insist. If this was the way of keeping us the mystery, I am sorry to say it, but it was not good. Because letting Agnès see that evidence, was something so obvious that it makes no sense otherwise.
Still, the dilemma of the mustache becomes one out of several. After hearing his father's message on the answering machine, Agnès tells him that, that is not possible, because his father is dead. Marc also mentions Serge and Nadia, so that Agnès ensures him that she does not know them. Marc goes so far as to call to his parent´s place, to what, in fact, the line appears unavailable. At this point he seems to be living an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Desperate and feeling he has lost track of reality, Marc escapes of the apartment before Agnès hospitalizes him, and arrives in taxis, to the airport, to leave, without luggage, to Hong Kong.
Marc arrives at hongkonese land to make this city his therapist, and looking to forget about so much nonsense. He settles in a hotel and starts a new routine, which Carrère describes, for several minutes, until getting us bored. He has left unfinished his "long fantasic episode," from the Rod Serling´s kind, to make one wonder, where was it left what we were seeing?
With China substituting France, the whole mystery of the mustache, Marc´s father and his friends is cast to one side, remaning in a sort of disconcerting stand by. The Mustache undergoes a change of course that leaves us waiting for a nonexistent revealing fact, when, at most, Marc leaves again the mustache and the beard.
Watching him in his days of tourists made me want to accelerate the scenes. Until one day he comes to the hotel, to find his wife in bed, reading, as if nothing. As if he had left on good terms.
At night they get together with a couple, which they, supposedly met on that trip. With them they see pictures of the four, in a digital camera, and in whose snapshots Marc notices as indisputable, the presence of his troubled mustache. However he is convinced he has never met these people, prior to that output, and not to mention that in his memory he has no records of those pictures in which he smiles.
Carrère, in this way, keeps on adding mysteries, regarding what has been lived or not lived by Marc, being married. Not making any attempt to clarify anything and without even giving us clues, his movies finishes as it began, allowing us to interpret as we wish. And to the contrary, I think the idea of the mustache, gave to much more, than such a vague closing.
If not, remember open endings, but well developed, such as in Contact (1997) or The Separation (2011), where at least one knew from which possibilities you could chose, and it was not a simple and indistinct "anything goes".
My rating: 2/10
My rating: 2/10
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