This is one of the most 60s films I've ever seen. Not youthful 60s with Beatles music, rebellion and rock and roll.
No, this is the other kind of 60s. The Nixonite 60s with Summer Samba music, swinger parties,
overly expensive New Age art and a strange liberal sex philosophy hidden under the veneer of conservative, buy the books Americana.
So the film follows a strange relationship that blooms between Howard Brubaker (Jack Lemmon) and
Catherine Gunther (Catherine Deneuve).
So there's this guy Howard. He's a real straight laced, simplistic kind of man. The kind of guy that wouldn't stick out of a crowd. he's a real Square when you get down to it.
Howard's about to receive a promotion and is asked to go to his boss's house to get the paperwork finalised (Or something to that effect).
But while there he discovers that there's this weird swingers party going on and the whole house is filled with this bizarre looking modern New Age art crap. Howard's completely out of his element. He doesn't know how to interact with any of the strange people, he doesn't get how half of the art works (not that I can blame him). He ends up accidentally taking this girl to a club simply because he said hello to her.
His boss told him to take a key to let him into a speciality Club so they can spend the evening together (It's not explicitly stated that they're supposed to have sex; but it's also not shied away from either. And given that the club they end up going to is this weird safari themed animal Hut where all the girls are dressed up like zebras and tigers, the guys are given little pop-guns to shoot the girls in the rears whan they want to get their attention. Everything is heavily implied to go a certain way.) Howard being so straight-laced and so concerned with keeping his head above water in relations with his boss does as he's told more out of impulse than desire.
Or at least that's how it happens at first. You see Howard and Catherine get talking over the night and they both discover that they have more of a spark for each other than they do for their respective spouses. All of this is made even more evident when they spend a bit of time with this fanatic old couple who live in a very Victorian style house. The woman there purposely shuffles a deck of tarot cards to try and convince Catherine that she should dump her husband and run off with this new random guy. And at the same time, Harold is having a sword fight with the Old Gentleman of the manor.
All of this culminates in this weird romanticised love affair that these two end up having. And in most movies they would break this apart or try to show that their love is flawed.
It would inevitably have both of these people going back to their respective spouses just so everybody has the theoretical happy ending (Or maybe it would show the other spouses getting together with each other, other people or that they were having their own Affair. Just something to even out the playing field, so our protagonists look more ethical and relatable). But we don't get that here.
These two people are in love with each other, they want nothing more to do with their former marriages and they're going to leave it all behind and run off to Paris in a vague attempt to run off into a fairytale lifestyle.
I kind of love that about this movie. It doesn't want to hold your hand and tell you that it's all going to turn out just fine in the end. It does give you a happy sense that these two lovebirds are getting together.
But it's never implied they're going to work through any problems or that they have any long-term goals. They're just two semi-sad people that decided to try and make a break for it to live out a new life and see what happens.
I can see a lot of people complaining that Harold was a bad man for leading his family. And on the surface he technically is. But we know how their family reacts to him. His wife is completely disinterested in him she has her own crew we are her own Hobbies her own private social life it's pretty clear that she's having an affair with somebody and their son has absolutely no interest in him either.
In fact he might be a future Sociopaths. The film doesn't get into any of that but the way the kid asks is very abnormal.
Conclusion: A surprisingly solid romantic comedy. You may not agree with the outcomes or the way anyone in this film handles themselves but it does deliver an interesting story.
It's one of those movies where the true experience doesn't come in the form of the major story but in all the little interactions and the best comedic moments are usually very dry and very quick.
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