At the age of 12, Antoine enjoyed going to a hairdresser shop just because he enjoyed getting his hair cut by Mrs. Sheaffer. He found the experience so sensual, he vowed to one day marry a hairdresser. As a grown up man, Antoine gets his hair trimmed in a saloon run by Mathilde, and proposes her. Eventually, she says yes, and they get married. They enjoy their marriage, and meet several customers in the saloon: an adopted kid who is afraid of a haircut; a man hiding from his wife; a lonely old man abandoned by his family... One day, after many years in marriage, after passionate sex, Mathilde runs off into the rain and commits suicide by jumping into the sea, since she wants to preserve their love in an ideal memory before it turns into routine. Antoine stays alone in the hair saloon, telling himself that the "hairdresser will return".
Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, "The Hairdresser's Husband" is one of the most peculiar film meditations on sensuality and erotic obsession in cinema, here presented in the symbolic form of the hero Antoine being utterly fascinated by a hairdresser giving him a haircut. It is not really a romance, but neither is it a drama nor a comedy, since it avoids typical genre qualifications, and instead just presents a depiction of a fascination of people by something, which gives them energy, inspiration and a will to live. The sequence alone in which the 12-year old Antoine enjoys being shampooed by hairdresser Mrs Sheaffer sounds normal on paper, but the director Patrice Laconte films it in such a pasisonate way that it almost feels like a soft porn. This flashback is told with a lot of charm, creativity and wisdom ("My father said life was simple, that if you wanted something enough you'd get it... Failure was proof the desire wasn't strong enough"), yet the main segment involving around a grown-up Antoine is a bit weaker.
One problem is the sequence where he goes to a hair saloon, gets a haircut by Mathilde, and, acting on impulse, suddenly proposes her. She doesn't say anything, naturally, since he is a stranger, and Antoine then just politely leaves. However, when he returns for a second time, she says yes—but why? She doesn't even know his name, nor was there any scene that illustrated their joint chemistry or connection, and thus this feels unconvincing and unearned, way too easy. Their marriage is so ideal that the movie feels kind of lost as to how to fill up its time, since nothing much happens. Here and there, Laconte adds a few clever metafilm solutions, such as the scene where the grown-up Antoine wakes up on the floor with Mathilde in the morning, looks up and spots his 12-year self looking through the window. It may have been a mistake to cast Jean Rochefort in the leading role, since he looks a little bit too old to portray a man who discovers the culmination of his passion at that age. Also, the bizarre ending simply does not work, and feels like a cheap way to gain some dramatic intensity through random (and unconvincing) death. Still, the movie has a great mood to it, depicting how passion works as a rejuvenation to people, but that even this rejuvenation does not last.
Grade:++
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