"La Moustache" provokes questions about whether there's something funny in the water in France.
The premise is bizarre, the script is flat and the viewer leaves confused, wondering if this movie could have been far, far better.
The plot is bizarre. Before a party, Marc (Vincent Lindon) asks his wife Agnes (Emmanuelle Devos) on a whim whether he should shave off the mustache he's had for his entire adult life. She claims that she "wouldn't know him without it." So of course Marc decides to shave off the facial hair and interrogates everyone at the party whether they notice anything different about him.
Neither his wife nor their two friends can say that they see anything different. Marc interprets this as an elaborate joke put on by his wife, a claim she denies multiple times. The lack of facial hair starts a chain of events that eventually drive Marc insane.
The de-mustachioed Frenchman goes through a strained relationship with his wife and discovers his father has died. Soon his friends and family start disappearing. All this from some missing hair.
The highly symbolic story, set to Philip Glass' haunting violin compositions, had incredible potential for a loss-of-identity story. And it is on this charge that "La Moustache" doesn't measure up.
To its credit, the acting is superb. But wonderful acting does not redeem a subpar script. The motion of the movie is more or less everyday life: eating dinner, watching soccer, sleeping. It's really a waste to have two such wonderful performances reduced to chin-jutting and finding pictures from a vacation to Bali.
The movie is so convoluted and confusing that it almost lacks meaning. Even the director claims that he doesn't know what the movie is about. The viewer is essentially given a Rorschach test in French movie form and left to wonder what to make of it, if anything. And like an inkblot test, it's easy to come to the conclusion that it's really nothing more than mere ink blots.
There are too many plotholes and unanswered questions and the movie doesn't really make any sense. The images of watching two people go about their daily lives while their relationship deteriorates for no observable reason might seem appealing to those who look at cinema with a sense of snobbish intellectualism. Or just those that like French cinema.
One could do worse than spend nine dollars on "La Moustache." But those unenthused by the premise of a shaving-induced identity crisis would be better off saving their money for their next CVS run.
