Just for Laughs!

One can’t help but think only five minutes into this drawing-room comedy that, contrary to what the title may lead us to believe, director Lucas Belvaux (who has acted in the films of Chabrol, Rivette and Assayas) has not made this film just for laughs. Indeed, Belvaux has taken the conventions of the genre and turned them upside down, leaving us wondering at times whether we should do the same with our smiles. There is, of course, the requisite love triangle, where a beautiful wife (the still ravishing Ornella Muti) cuckolds her mouse of a husband (Jean-Pierre Léaud, never better) with a handsome young sports journalist (Antoine Chappey). But her husband eventually finds out about the affair and, unlike the classic vaudeville plot line, decides to take charge, and it is the two lovers who become the pawns of his subterfuge to save his marriage. This is only one of many clever inversions of both plot and characterization that give this comedy its peculiar edge (a particularly winning variation is having Muti play a hotshot lawyer and Léaud the sensitive househusband who keeps abreast by reading Elle magazine). Although the story gets pretty zany at times, and there’s a surprise happy (well, almost) ending, Belvaux doesn’t let us forget the more serious matter at hand, which is how infidelity can crush people’s lives. –SFIFF