Original title: Le Mari de la Coiffeuse
Year: 1990
Runtime: 1 hours, 18 minutes
Country: France
Language: French
Subtitles: English (.srt)
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Romance
Director: Patrice Leconte
Cast:
Jean Rochefort: Antoine
Anna Galiena: Mathilde
Roland Bertin: Antoine’s father
Maurice Chevit: Ambroise Dupre dit Isidore Agopian
Philippe Clevenot: Morvoisieux
Jacques Mathou: Julien Gora
Claude Aufaure: Gay Customer
Plot/Synopsis:
Erotic, funny, and very French, this film relies heavily on the critically-acclaimed performance of Jean Rochefort. As a child, Antoine was obsessed with the ample beautician who cut his hair, and since then, his single ambition in life has been to marry a hairdresser. As an adult, Antoine meets a woman (Anna Galiena) who seems to be the perfect incarnation of his childhood fantasies. He promptly marries her, then spends most of his daylight hours sitting in her shop, watching her every move. They are so crazy in love that some days they close up early to be alone. As time passes the shop becomes their entire world.
Patrice Leconte’s bittersweet romance is modestly proportioned with an economical prologue rooting Antoine’s erotic obsession with women who can cut and shampoo his hair in a specific series of episodes from his youth, followed by one of the briefest (but amazingly believable) courtships in movie history, followed by a deliriously happy marriage, and then a wrap-up that observant viewers can see coming a mile away. Jean Rochefort, as the sad-eyed, placid Antoine, makes a wonderful observer, and as his main observee, Anna Galiena throws off the requisite sexual sparks without losing a certain kind of demureness. Leconte’s use of overhead shots inside the barber shop offers another layer to the narrative; though this is a first-person film all the way, with Antoine offering voice-overs all the way through the story, we are offered a view of events he could never have. This sets up a satisfying final shot. Though Leconte has gone on to make more ambitious films (Ridicule, The Girl on the Bridge), this film still stands as his most perfectly realized and executed work.
Torrent Download
The Hairdresser’s Husband (1990)
Uploaded by: dstead
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