When a chain spontaneously shaves off the title lodger of his upper lip in “The Moustache,” an outward shift in the fabric of the universe results. Adapting his own 1986 best-seller, Emmanuel Carrere — whose books “Class Trip” and “The Adversary” became Cannes Competition titles by Claude Miller and Nicole Garcia, respectively — provides a feast of incessant tension as the man’s ball and his closest friends deny that he eternally had a moustache. Viewers who like their conclusions tidy may dissenter, but those who relish outstanding perfs in the service of an intriguing idea will be entertained.
Awash in unsettling, matter-of-fact contradictions that are deliciously open to interpretation, pic’s tone is a bit like “Gaslight” meets Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant.”
Architect Marc (Vincent Lindon) and his wife Agnes (Emmanuelle Devos) live in a beautiful multi-level Paris house that’s the height of classy contempo design. As they prepare to join friends (Mathieu Amalric, Macha Polikarpova) for dinner, Marc, on a whim, shaves off the moustache he’s apparently worn his entire adult life. The process is filmed with ritualistic intensity: Marc is meticulous, capturing stray hairs in a porcelain dish, cleaning up the evidence of foam and facial debris like a conscientious chambermaid.
But Agnes doesn’t notice the change. And, their friends don’t comment on the radical alteration either. Is this some kind of group plot, some conspiracy of silence?
When Marc says it’s time to halt the charade, Agnes hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s referring to. When he spells it out, she assures him he never had a moustache. Snapshots from a 2003 vacation would seem to settle the issue, but only increase the blossoming unease.
Helmer gets incredible mileage out of tale’s deceptively simple catalyst. Pic — told entirely from beleaguered protag’s p.o.v. — can be read as a deft riff on how men and women sometimes perceive the same situation differently; as a subjective glimpse of creeping paranoia; as a full-bore unraveling of one or more personalities; or as an ever-shifting buffet of all three approaches.
Lindon and Devos couldn’t be better as the well-matched, well-to-do couple whose romantic partnership appears to be under fire from the gods of perception.
Lensing and editing render each development and each new clue crystal clear despite narrative’s aggregate ambiguity. Rarely has the trippy maxim “Wherever you go — there you are” been so well depicted. An insistent Philip Glass violin concerto is used to fine effect.