Le Mari de la coiffeuse (1990)
Directed by Patrice Leconte

Film Review

Le mari de la coiffeuse,  one of Patrice Leconte's best films, is a delicate existentialist portrait of passion, in which the need to love and be loved is shown to be every bit as vital as eating and breathing.  The sumptuous moody photography conveys a whole range of conflicting moods, drawing the spectator willingly into the emotionally insecure but irresistible universe of a hairdresser and her husband.

The golden sunlight of idyllic happiness which bathes much of the film hides but does not obliterate the shadow of tragedy which surfaces towards the end.  The unusual and compelling cinematography transforms a barren narrative into a stunning work of art, one in which Jean Rochefort and Anna Galiena mesmerise us, playing a couple whose sole desire is to live for love and for love alone.  An evocative and haunting work which will have a marked effect on anyone who watches it.

Film Synopsis

In middle-age, Antoine looks back on his life and recalls happy times when he was a little boy holidaying in Luc-sur-Mer with his brother.  How he hated having to wear those woollen bathing costumes knitted for him by his mother.  Had she no respect for the peculiarities of the male anatomy?  Antoine takes more consolation from his lustful memories of Madame Shaeffer, the plump hairdresser who first ignited his adolescent libido.  His earnest declaration that one day he would marry a hairdresser did not go down well with his father.  Thirty years later, Antoine would get to fulfil his ambition, after meeting Mathilde, another hairdresser for whom he developed a wild infatuation.  Antoine proposed to her the first time she cut his hair, but naturally she refused.

The next time Antoine made his offer, Mathilde couldn't turn him down again, so to avoid endless requests for marriage every time her admirer came for a haircut, she happily consented to be his wife.  Of course the shock of this was enough to put Antoine's father in his grave.  His life's dream fulfilled, Antoine could not have been happier during those years of marital bliss with his seraphic hairdresser wife.  They did fall out once - over the merits of Fernand Raynaud - but they soon patched things up and life resumed its idyllic, trouble-free course... until the terrible day when it had to end.  Mathilde could not bear to face the day when her beloved's passion for her would turn cold, so after a final embrace they parted in a storm.  As the rains tumble in a sweet lament, Antoine is left alone with his memories of the golden times when he was the hairdresser's husband...