It was French comedian Coluche who once said "I take fun from areas where people work, while gynecologists do the opposite". Well, Pierre Dufour (Jean-Pierre Marielle) would certainly acquiesce, his work consists of examining the intimacy of female patients at high cadency, making him the least likely candidate for satisfying any needs going through that area. And so when we meet him, he's a man who's got professional burnout written all over his stern face and Bertrand Blier found quite a bizarre way to depict his escape from professional alienation.
It is a scene the expression "seeing is believing" exists for, Pierre's having an improvised meal on his office while one of his patients, a bourgeois lady laying on the stirrups keeps her legs spread so he has a clear view on a real-life representation of the "Origin of the World". The scene is awkwardly silent, Pierre picks a big baguette (no innuendo... I guess), some pâté and wine, and then the breaking point is reached at the first bite when his patient starts scratching her public hair (and I add an "l" to avoid problems). The next shot is stylistically perfect with the two legs in the foreground and the man slowly rising in-between, you don't make symbolic rebirth more explicit.
What follows is one of the most hilarious scenes of 70s cinema, a woman approaches Pierre and asks for "Gustave Flaubert street" "why are you asking?" he shouts. "None of your business" she says "then don't bust my balls! That's all I'm asking" Thinking she'll find an allied spirit in a passer-by played by Jean Rochefort, she gets the second round "Can"t you see he's had enough? You want the incident or what?" the two men leave the woman totally bewildered, their friendship instantly sealed by a mutual disdain for a demographic category they chose to label as ball-breakers. Why they say they've had enough might get over the heads of many viewers and I too had to check some trivia.
The film was released in 1976, the Year of the Woman in France, shortly after the legalization of abortion and the sexual liberation movement where women proclaimed ownership on their body and criticized patriarchy (before it became a trend). Visibly triggered, the two men decided that women can't have the cake and eat it so they ran away to a remote village in the countryside. There's a rampant misogyny that hasn't aged well and Bier himself admitted that the film was a big farce that went a little out of control but to his defense, there's something irreverential and libertarian matching the post-68 era and that middle-aged men were no less entitled to embrace.
In a way, "Calmos" is less an anti-feminist than a masculinist film, contradicting the idea that men are only driven by lust-driven appetites. If anything once they moved to a pastoral setting, Pierre and Albert rediscover the pleasures of good food and wine and befriend a truculent alcoholic priest played by Blier's father Bertrand. At that point, the two friends have reached a certain harmony although Albert played by Rochefort seems more uncertain.... I admire the two actors, Marielle is so grandiloquent and histrionic he takes the lion share of one-liners and makes Rochefort a little bland in comparison. I was also wary that the film would lose his breath but the two men's wives (Brigitte Fossey and Valérie Mairesse ) come back and blackmail the priest into convincing the fellows to go back to Paris.
The 'back to house' part isn't exactly the film's highlight and might strike as more blatantly misogynistic in the way it features every woman as a potential nympho. But then the duo escapes again into the open country followed by other men tired of having to fulfill marital duties to ungrateful creatures. Some could even see a sort of "Fight Club" brotherhood with men tired of asserting their masculinity. At some point one of the followers (Gérard Jugnot) complain that there's not much to do, he's told to get back to his wife if he wants order. Can't have it all. It quickly gets out of control when the men meet with a tank and the two heroes are captured by a squad of military Amazon women. It's an interesting form of female empowerment with a subversion of roles and an ahead-of-its-time depiction of a certain sensual female gaze. And basically at that point, you understand that this is not a film that you should question, you just follow the flot and see how weird it can get.
And so we get to the final chapter where Pierre and Albert are in a medical lab in Paris, fixed to their beds and with enormous erections, and women come for a two-minute of copulation. It's "A Clockwork Orange" crossed with Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex". At that point, you never know whether it's insulting to women to reduce them to sexual needs or men as phallic objects... one thing for sure, the film won't be aired any soon. Still, it has achieved a certain time-capsule significance through its reference to that period where the line between liberty and license had already been crossed, one that ironically desacralized the female body and made men less accountable for their actions, highlighting a certain hypocrisy of a movement that rejected the patriarcal machinery but not all the tools.
The film concludes on the kind of surreal note that bookends the opening, maybe a tribute to that Bukowski story of a man so small he was used by his woman as a dildo... as if it was shot by Terry Gilliam. I don't know if the film's message would really pass today but I admire the creativity of Bertrand Blier, Marielle's performance and the messy yet refreshing bizarreness of that piece of cinematic weirdness...
It is a scene the expression "seeing is believing" exists for, Pierre's having an improvised meal on his office while one of his patients, a bourgeois lady laying on the stirrups keeps her legs spread so he has a clear view on a real-life representation of the "Origin of the World". The scene is awkwardly silent, Pierre picks a big baguette (no innuendo... I guess), some pâté and wine, and then the breaking point is reached at the first bite when his patient starts scratching her public hair (and I add an "l" to avoid problems). The next shot is stylistically perfect with the two legs in the foreground and the man slowly rising in-between, you don't make symbolic rebirth more explicit.
What follows is one of the most hilarious scenes of 70s cinema, a woman approaches Pierre and asks for "Gustave Flaubert street" "why are you asking?" he shouts. "None of your business" she says "then don't bust my balls! That's all I'm asking" Thinking she'll find an allied spirit in a passer-by played by Jean Rochefort, she gets the second round "Can"t you see he's had enough? You want the incident or what?" the two men leave the woman totally bewildered, their friendship instantly sealed by a mutual disdain for a demographic category they chose to label as ball-breakers. Why they say they've had enough might get over the heads of many viewers and I too had to check some trivia.
The film was released in 1976, the Year of the Woman in France, shortly after the legalization of abortion and the sexual liberation movement where women proclaimed ownership on their body and criticized patriarchy (before it became a trend). Visibly triggered, the two men decided that women can't have the cake and eat it so they ran away to a remote village in the countryside. There's a rampant misogyny that hasn't aged well and Bier himself admitted that the film was a big farce that went a little out of control but to his defense, there's something irreverential and libertarian matching the post-68 era and that middle-aged men were no less entitled to embrace.
In a way, "Calmos" is less an anti-feminist than a masculinist film, contradicting the idea that men are only driven by lust-driven appetites. If anything once they moved to a pastoral setting, Pierre and Albert rediscover the pleasures of good food and wine and befriend a truculent alcoholic priest played by Blier's father Bertrand. At that point, the two friends have reached a certain harmony although Albert played by Rochefort seems more uncertain.... I admire the two actors, Marielle is so grandiloquent and histrionic he takes the lion share of one-liners and makes Rochefort a little bland in comparison. I was also wary that the film would lose his breath but the two men's wives (Brigitte Fossey and Valérie Mairesse ) come back and blackmail the priest into convincing the fellows to go back to Paris.
The 'back to house' part isn't exactly the film's highlight and might strike as more blatantly misogynistic in the way it features every woman as a potential nympho. But then the duo escapes again into the open country followed by other men tired of having to fulfill marital duties to ungrateful creatures. Some could even see a sort of "Fight Club" brotherhood with men tired of asserting their masculinity. At some point one of the followers (Gérard Jugnot) complain that there's not much to do, he's told to get back to his wife if he wants order. Can't have it all. It quickly gets out of control when the men meet with a tank and the two heroes are captured by a squad of military Amazon women. It's an interesting form of female empowerment with a subversion of roles and an ahead-of-its-time depiction of a certain sensual female gaze. And basically at that point, you understand that this is not a film that you should question, you just follow the flot and see how weird it can get.
And so we get to the final chapter where Pierre and Albert are in a medical lab in Paris, fixed to their beds and with enormous erections, and women come for a two-minute of copulation. It's "A Clockwork Orange" crossed with Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex". At that point, you never know whether it's insulting to women to reduce them to sexual needs or men as phallic objects... one thing for sure, the film won't be aired any soon. Still, it has achieved a certain time-capsule significance through its reference to that period where the line between liberty and license had already been crossed, one that ironically desacralized the female body and made men less accountable for their actions, highlighting a certain hypocrisy of a movement that rejected the patriarcal machinery but not all the tools.
The film concludes on the kind of surreal note that bookends the opening, maybe a tribute to that Bukowski story of a man so small he was used by his woman as a dildo... as if it was shot by Terry Gilliam. I don't know if the film's message would really pass today but I admire the creativity of Bertrand Blier, Marielle's performance and the messy yet refreshing bizarreness of that piece of cinematic weirdness...
