Bryan Miller
Monogamish-ness is having a moment in entertainment, from the Lindy West book discourse to TV’s DTF St. Louis to movies like Splitsville, the forthcoming Gail Daughtry’s Celebrity Sex Pass, and now the French Canadian dramedy Follies (Folichonneries). The French pretty much invented the extramarital sex comedy, although these are French-Canadians, a distinction hilariously made in the opening scene, a long, static shot of suburban married couple Julie (Catherine Chabot) and Francois (writer-director Eric K. Boulianne) listening politely while another couple, off camera, describes the particulars of their open relationship in graphic detail. A dozen other emotions flicker across their faces in microexpression as they struggle to project casual acceptance. It’s a particular collision of Frenchness and Canadianness that pervades the movie; universal as its ideas are, Follies is a distinctly, delightfully Quebecois.
It turns out that Francois has been in a rut for a couple of years despite having an amiable if not especially passionate relationship with Julie, with whom he shares two young daughters. He thinks an open marriage sounds like the solution. She’s skeptical but goes along with it. Her lack of enthusiasm is evident in their first few encounters, although the stocky, slightly schlubby Francois finds himself struggling to attract partners when his wife isn’t along for the literal ride. But when another pair of women invites Julie to be their third, she begins to discover the liberation Francois was seeking all along.
This all sounds potentially dour, or at least dire, but Boulianne keenly balances the comedy and drama. That balance is essential in Follies, a movie that could easily stray into raunchy slapstick, smutty frivolity, or, perhaps worst of all, a bout of hypocritical titivation en route to moralistic finger-wagging. There is some wagging to be seen for sure, but those aren’t fingers. Boulianne finds the humor in the awkwardness of self-discovery and sexual misadventure while remaining grounded in the reality of his characters’ otherwise conventional lives. He’s committed to the idea that these are real problems experienced by real people, even if their expression seems a bit extreme. In fact, one of the points the film settles on is that even the most normcore among us sometimes need a bit of extremity.
The comedy of Follies derives from situations that are, if not perhaps literally recognizable, quite plausible. At one point, Francois decides to visit a sex club in the city. Whatever free-for-all orgy he’s imagining is displaced by a sexual equivalent of Disneyland disappointment, as it’s mostly a bunch of naked dudes standing in a long line hoping for a glimpse of the ride. Francois winds up at the downstairs bar, enjoying a pint and an order of poutine. As I said, it’s a very French-Canadian movie.
The furthest-flung escapades in Follies lead the couple to a libertine masquerade ball self-consciously modeled on Eyes Wide Shut, which provides a couple of great inside jokes for Kubrick devotees. But mostly Julie and Francois’ experimentations play out in local bars and mid-priced hotels. Unconventional sexual relationships, as the couple discovers, are a lot more conventional than they thought, or at least more common. These alternative arrangements are neither a dead-end, nor a panacea. It’s just a different way of existing in the world.
Follies works so well because first-time director Boulianne is a terrific writer who grounds the humor in his characters’ believable yet often surprising reactions rather than setting up punchlines or playing kinks for sight gags. The whole enterprise demands a lot from all the actors, especially Chabot. This is about as explicit a comedy as you’ll see, even by the standards of Bigas Luna or Pedro Almodovar; perhaps the notoriously censored Romanian comedy Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn comes the closest. But Follies never feels exploitative in the least, perhaps in large part because Boulianne puts himself in perhaps the most vulnerable positions of all, sometimes quite literally. The result is one of the most thoughtful, humanistic, laugh-out-loud funny movies you should absolutely never watch with anyone in your family.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival features over 200 films from around the world, plus an array of parties, panels, visiting filmmakers, and special guests.
