Le Bonheur

                       
Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur  (happiness or "the Good Hour"), from 1965, is a skillful and accomplished fim that I don't like much. A harbinger of second wave feminism, this tale of a love triangle starts with a close-up of a flower and proceeds in to revel in floral imagery for its scant 80 minutes. Yet, this is a too obvious feint on Varda's part for a film that is a critique of capitalist bourgeoise domesticity. The wife in the menage ends up like poor Ophelia, while the other woman steps in easily to take her place in the family group.

There are two main visual approaches to the material in the film. Like Godard from the same era, Varda uses a mod, pop art mise en scene that critiques and comments upon the thin melodrama. Billboards, movie posters, photos, pinups and all manner of signage are utilized within the frame. This was Varda's first feature in color and it is fun to see her cut loose. Even the fade outs fade not to black, but to bright colors. 

The other main visual influence and approach is the naturalism of French plein air painting and cinema. Varda tips her hand, again a little too obviously, by including a lengthy clip from Jean Renoir's Dejeuner sur l'herbe on a television during an early scene. The film is full of charmingly naturalistic French vignettes: picnics and other forms of alfresco dining, dances at outdoor cafes, trips to the farmer's market, camping. All the more beautiful to heighten the melodrama and the film's ironic denouement. At least that how it must have looked on the drawing board.

The main problem with the film is that the film's three leads have no felt presence. Varda is so jazzed by her color schemes and fancy editing effects, that the leads come off as models in a fashion shoot; especially in the erotic scenes, which lack juice and believability. I enjoyed the film more than Manny Farber did, he dismissed it as "an extended ad for Kodak", but think its latter day status as a feminist classic is a case more of wish fulfillment than rigorous critical estimation. Varda was made of sterner stuff, as she was to show in her subsequent films, especially her 1985 masterpiece, Vagabond.