Happiness is a fruit that tastes of cruelty

Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur is a bit like nature itself and coincidentally it makes ample use of the natural element. By this I mean, that on the surface it looks like a gentle, warm film shot through with autumnal hues but beneath it is amoral, fierce and chilling in a manner I have not encountered before. I think it is perhaps wrong to read the film as simply feminist/anti-feminist though it appears to have been read both ways. In part, this may be its theme, though the central character, if at all, is the man. In Varda’s film the pleasant, humdrum rituals of lower middle class provincial life (I assume this to be the case, given the occupation of the husband and wife) are swiftly recorded in the initial scenes of a picnic, visits to relatives, the scenes of work followed by an excursion and the introduction of infidelity in this setting. The title tells us that this movie is about “happiness” and at one point in the movie the husband confesses that his happiness has increased not lessened as a result of the affair i.e. the crowded relationship is a happier one. But the movie is not a simple examination of happiness or anything along the lines of infidelity invigorates a marriage (though Varda does have a scene where the young husband is more passionate in his ardour post the beginning of the affair). The death of the wife in fact may well be a result of her unhappiness, alternately it could be a gift, and alternately it may be to induce a sense of guilt. If the last is the case, it fails because Varda’s film ends as it begins with the same colour codes as a family of four makes its way to a picnic. Only the wife this time is the lover setting in process another cycle. Varda’s end may be seen as chilling or anti-feminist but in a way it reinforces both the cyclicality of nature as well as its amorality. Life goes on in much the same way, the husband mourns for a period of time, perhaps the children miss their mother but in the end the normal patterns of life resume. Varda has a cool, impersonal touch in this film though she paradoxically brings a great deal of warmth to the images themselves; they radiate the cool heat of the sunflower motif of her film. I think her approach is enigmatic and extremely effective in muting the inherent painfulness and drama of the situation. We observe from a distance but sans sentimentality and morality. In the end the film is effective in tying the human self to nature and its implacable, unchanging rhythms. All of us are indeed replaceable and no one happiness seems greater than the other. Varda's editing, her framing of scenes, her use of music also add to the picture.

I had seen The Gleaners (Varda and the film discussed here) prior to this movie which is what brought me to Varda. Judging by the movies I saw, there is something in her approach that greatly appeals to me. Unfortunately I couldn’t catch the rest of her screenings.

Le Bonheur also put me in mind of other French movies I had seen (all of which bar Gilles' Wife were made by women), especially in the way it approaches the depiction of ordinary work. The unhurried camera recording the minutiae of women's work seems to be something of a French specialty in movies like Gilles' Wife and Brodeuses. With Lady Chatterley, the movie also shares a minute recording of the elements of nature and the integration of people into it. It put me most in mind of Gilles' Wife because of the story – i.e. the effect of infidelity on a marriage. Otherwise the films are different with the second movie being mostly concerned with the burdens placed on a wife attempting to understand her husband's infidelity. Gilles' Wife (with an excellent performance from Emmanuelle Devos) is observed from the wife’s viewpoint and we can feel her suffer as she tries to save the marriage – the morality of the situation is all too clear, indeed the wife is the only “good soul” in the troika.

An interesting review of Le Bonheur here.