Agnès Varda is an institution. She is a filmmaker who made films before, during and after the French New Wave. She is, by that very rationale, the epitomical figure of the French New Wave – and considering she was one of a few women in a cinematic movement almost entirely controlled by men, her films often take on a very powerful social sentiment, mirroring Varda’s own profound feminist leanings. I have previously explored some of her most distinctive works, most significantly her non-fiction films that she produced later on in her career – The Gleaners and I, The Beaches of Agnès and Faces Places just last year, all of which were incredibly moving, profound films. I have admired her for a very long time, and consider myself to be an ardent devotee to her brilliant work. However, as anyone who has been enamoured with an artist who has been blessed with a longevity of career, there is bound to be disappointments along the way, with certain of their works not being able to reach the standard set by the artist’s towering masterpieces. This happened to me most recently when I watched Varda’s Le Bonheur, a film that I can’t make up my mind about, and was left unfortunately disappointed, which is disheartening but understandable – not everything made by a great artist can be good, but its still quite upsetting, because I really wanted to like this film, and it left me upset and chagrined with how frustratingly mediocre it was.

François (Jean-Claude Drouot) is a carpenter who leads a very happy life. His wife (Claire Drouot) is a loving spouse, and they have two children who are the epitome of what every parent hope their offspring will be – adorable, quirky and adoring of their father. However, despite his life being filled with nothing but happiness, he experiences a certain emptiness, which is eventually filled by the arrival in his life of a beautiful woman who works at the local post office named Emilie (Marie-France Boyer), and they begin a passionate love affair. François’ happiness reaches a new apex, and his life looks sunnier than ever before – he has his sultry mistress to keep him occupied with afternoon delights, whereas his adoring wife keeps him busy every evening. Everything seems to be going so well for François, until he makes the mistake of admitting to his affair and trying to come to a compromise with his wife, which only ends in tragedy, as she realizes that she is not the only person giving François love and commitment and that she is forced to share her husband with another woman. What is François to do? How will Thérèse come to terms with the fact that their happy marriage is now just another constituent of François’ gallivanting selfish attempts to achieve some joyful bliss at the expense of traditional decency? These are the questions asked in Le Bonheur, a film that literally translates to “Happiness”. This was not a film that made me happy though – if anything, this film depressed me beyond belief.

Here is where I am divided on Le Bonheur – I am not sure what Varda was trying to make with this film. It isn’t clear if she was trying to make the same brand of existentialist social dramas that her contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut made their careers with, or if she was trying to parody those kinds of films through a ridiculously absurd satire that takes a sardonic look at society in a way that is bitter, sparing very little detail for the truth of what happens beneath an idyllic marriage. This is why I am so confounded by this film – I’m not sure if Le Bonheur is a towering success or a dismal failure, and it all depends on what Varda was trying to make with this film, and the message she was attempting to convey. Regardless, I consider Le Bonheur to not be a good film precisely because of its inability to make its intentions clear. For an existential drama, it is trite and hideous, and for a social satire, it is obscure and ineffective. As a film, Le Bonheur is an uncomfortable experience, but not one that challenges the audience, but rather one that does something even worse: it bores them.

If we look at Le Bonheur as a social drama, we come to realize how faulty it is. I mentioned it above, but Varda was a powerful social and political voice. It is impossible to look at Varda’s career and detach the art from the cultural climate, as well as Varda’s actions during that time. A staunch feminist who strove to represent women cinematically in ways that none of her contemporaries were able to do. She did so much for female empowerment in cinema, and she set the groundwork for much of the subsequent movement towards increased feminine representation in the arts. This is perhaps the most significant reason I adore her – Varda was an outspoken advocate for equality, empowerment and effective representation. Therefore, considering Le Bonheur is a film that takes every female character and makes them objects of the main male character’s desires, items that he can use to his pleasure and then subsequently push aside in his own journey towards self-improvement and his own attempts at endless happiness. Women are not represented poorly – to say that suggests that they were given even an iota of personality or nuance. Both actresses playing the lovers deserved better – they seemed genuinely lovely and did the best with the non-existent material they were given. Claire Drouot isn’t even given her own credit, but rather listed underneath Jean-Claude Druout as “his wife”. The female characters in this film were not given any personality or nuance, and come off as one-dimensional, objective beings rather than well-formed, meaningful individuals, and that’s almost unacceptable considering the potential this film had.

The fact that this film revolves around a man who is able to seduce any woman and not face the consequences of his lascivious actions is quite worrying, and its made only worse when you consider that Varda’s resolution to the revelation of the affair (which could have been a very powerful moment for female empowerment) was to have the wife very casually commit suicide because her husband is having an affair, leaving two young children behind and a husband who claimed to not have any malicious intent, but rather unquenchable urges. This resolution was not as disturbing as it was unnecessary – and of course, the result of that is our protagonist very casually giving his children to his relatives and claiming that he’ll visit them when its convenient for him (“I can see them every evening if I want”), only to have his mistress marry him and adopt their children. For a filmmaker who has always been so preoccupied with feminist issues, very boldly stating that she was one a few women who dared to have an abortion when it was still illegal, who made films like Cléo from 5 to 7 and Réponse de femmes: Notre corps, notre sexe, groundbreaking works that explore what it is like to be a woman in the twentieth century, I am quite concerned that Varda opted to make a film as tone-deaf as Le Bonheur is very much out of the ordinary.

The only explanation was that Le Bonheur was intended as a satire because I refuse to believe Varda was actually trying to make something serious here. However, just because something is a satire does mean that it has permission to be tasteless and poorly-constructed. The characters in this film are beyond parodic, and it almost seems like Varda had never encountered a real person because what we were presented with her was an ensemble of waifish women and poetic men who are able to seduce anyone through a single word. Robotic and lifeless, these characters were so uncompelling and bland, they would be amusing if they weren’t so irritating. It feels like Varda was trying to sardonically comment on the films made by her fellow collaborators in the French New Wave, with films often being centred on hypermasculine men who fancy themselves poetic philosophers and seductive lotharios, whose entire existences depend on “winning” women. In this regard, Le Bonheur does have some potential – I won’t deny that this is a concept with great potential – its just rendered inconsequential with the frank disregard for narrative cohesion or making characters that the audience can feel something towards – a character doesn’t need to be likeable, but they should at least be interesting enough to hold the audience’s attention, and that just doesn’t work here, and these characters would be wonderfully despicable and laughably entertaining in their actions if they weren’t just so unquestionably boring.

I cannot understand where Varda went wrong with this film. Despite being beautifully-shot (the use of saturated colours was masterful, and the film was at least very visually-striking), Le Bonheur just derails into something quite troubling. As a satire, it doesn’t work, and as a social existentialist drama, it is a dismal failure. It doesn’t make me question my adoration for Varda, but I certainly don’t think this film is very good at all. It has some moments where it seems to be approaching something quite interesting and effective, but it loses its way through the most banal exploration of characters who are not only unrealistic but bear absolutely no resemblance to any person I have ever met. I was hoping that the general perception of this film was wrong, that it was just a misunderstood masterpiece, but it is harrowing to have to admit that it isn’t very good at all and that while Varda has shown herself to be an amazing filmmaker with other works that are brilliant artistic achievements, this is not one of them. This film could’ve been worse, but it could have also been a lot better, and I am just frustrated, so it is better not to give too much thought to this misguided attempt at social commentary that just misses the target in every conceivable way.