MON HOMME (40)

Directed by: Bertrand Blier

Starring: Anouk Grinberg, Gerard Lanvin, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

The Pitch: A cheerful whore picks up a homeless (and abusive) tramp and makes him her pimp.

Theo Sez: The title - "My Man", like the old Fanny Brice torch-song - is no accident : the theme of this deliberately shocking movie is the old, pre-feminist view of women as gentle, not to say masochistic, creatures whose greatest pleasure in life is to serve their man - though it's also, as in other Blier movies (TROP BELLE POUR TOI!, GOING PLACES), the stupid macho arrogance of men that somehow manages to wreck even this ideal (for them) arrangement. That's basically why the film isn't offensive - it's too ironic for that - though in fact Blier's fragmented style has always made his films seem likeable and irreverent. The problem here is that, after 20 years of frantic audacity, he seems to have run out of energy - or perhaps he's become too much of an institution (witness the multitude of well-known French stars in cameo roles). The film careers along as free-spiritedly as ever, jumping in time and adding (and losing) characters with abandon, but it all seems a bit stale and pointless - it's all trickery, nothing really being satirised (maybe it just lacks some hapless Everyman figure that things can happen to - everyone in it seems too tough, too unshockable). In the end, it's easier to appreciate what it's doing than to enjoy it.