I first saw Cousin, Cousine when it was released and saw it again this evening. In the guise of a light comedy (with twinkly peppy little music), this movie is virtually a dirge for matrimony but is yet more striking for the gaiety with which humiliation is deliberately caused the outsider, and the astonishing ease with which even youngsters treat their parents' abandonment of their marriages.
It is an extraordinary movie - as foreign from reality in its treatment of the young children's reaction to their middle class parents' humiliation of their other parents before all their relations, as any science fiction movie.
***SPOILERS***
Moreover, the movie shows the utter indifference of those alive toward those newly dead - the impatience to leave the funeral, the distraction at the gravesite by the possibility of sex with an attractive stranger, an absence of family feeling so devastating that the brother of the deceased cannot get a single person from the family to lunch with him upon the funeral's conclusion - exams, work, swimming all take pre-eminence.
Although presented as a "comedy", this is one of the gravest indictments of the destruction of the family. The protagonists: a man who's destroying his second marriage by his deliberate infliction of humiliation upon his second wife in front of his daughter - he pushes his wife into attempted suicide and attempted abandonment of her stepdaughter; and a woman who repeatedly says she sought to kill herself a year before, has previously been unfaithful to her husband and now does so again in spectacular fashion - before her young son.
Their spouses: a man whose train of affairs has led him to merely 30 fewer than Casanova and a woman whose inability to cope with her husband's feckless approach to life (e.g., the changing of jobs every three years), has led her to most enjoy sleeping - these two will leave their spouses to have sex during the course of the wedding reception of their spouses' mother and uncle.
In its portrayal of a family past all caring, the movie is fascinating. As the rest of the family celebrates the birth of Christianity in one room, two of the members commit adultery in the next - yet other family members pleased at the humiliation, prevent their interruption.
The amazing thing is the absence of the humiliation's effects on the zombie-like remainder of the family who seem to romp: a) in the knowledge that their parents and children, sisters and cousins, will again divorce due to the betrayal of their spouses, and b) in the humiliation of their parents.
But perhaps the effects are indeed there - one daughter announces her intention of killing all human beings - when she announces her retraction of the decision - it is only because human beings are not worth her trouble - and the other couple's son is often cranky - he wants to go home, but must wait for his father to finish sex with another.
The stories the children tell each other all revolve around the debauchery of family members; the pictures the female child takes at weddings are of fornicating members of the family, the drunken exhibitionism of the grandfather, and the sickness of other drunken members. Toward the end of the movie, the girl announces to her grandfather that she had sex the previous week - the grandfather kisses her forehead!
Perhaps the moviemaker does realize the awesome effects of the debauchery on the family.
The movie is quite dark - the female protagonist asks that she be made to cry because she has never been able to do so - the male middle aged protagonist who shrugs when asked about what work he would ever like to do in life. Neither has any sympathy for the spouses upon whom they seek to inflict public humiliation as frequently as they can - at family weddings, at family funerals, at gatherings at restaurants. When one spouse leaves after attempted suicide, there is parental indifference and smiles by the children.
**** End of Spoilers ****
This is an amazingly creepy and depressing movie.
It is an extraordinary movie - as foreign from reality in its treatment of the young children's reaction to their middle class parents' humiliation of their other parents before all their relations, as any science fiction movie.
***SPOILERS***
Moreover, the movie shows the utter indifference of those alive toward those newly dead - the impatience to leave the funeral, the distraction at the gravesite by the possibility of sex with an attractive stranger, an absence of family feeling so devastating that the brother of the deceased cannot get a single person from the family to lunch with him upon the funeral's conclusion - exams, work, swimming all take pre-eminence.
Although presented as a "comedy", this is one of the gravest indictments of the destruction of the family. The protagonists: a man who's destroying his second marriage by his deliberate infliction of humiliation upon his second wife in front of his daughter - he pushes his wife into attempted suicide and attempted abandonment of her stepdaughter; and a woman who repeatedly says she sought to kill herself a year before, has previously been unfaithful to her husband and now does so again in spectacular fashion - before her young son.
Their spouses: a man whose train of affairs has led him to merely 30 fewer than Casanova and a woman whose inability to cope with her husband's feckless approach to life (e.g., the changing of jobs every three years), has led her to most enjoy sleeping - these two will leave their spouses to have sex during the course of the wedding reception of their spouses' mother and uncle.
In its portrayal of a family past all caring, the movie is fascinating. As the rest of the family celebrates the birth of Christianity in one room, two of the members commit adultery in the next - yet other family members pleased at the humiliation, prevent their interruption.
The amazing thing is the absence of the humiliation's effects on the zombie-like remainder of the family who seem to romp: a) in the knowledge that their parents and children, sisters and cousins, will again divorce due to the betrayal of their spouses, and b) in the humiliation of their parents.
But perhaps the effects are indeed there - one daughter announces her intention of killing all human beings - when she announces her retraction of the decision - it is only because human beings are not worth her trouble - and the other couple's son is often cranky - he wants to go home, but must wait for his father to finish sex with another.
The stories the children tell each other all revolve around the debauchery of family members; the pictures the female child takes at weddings are of fornicating members of the family, the drunken exhibitionism of the grandfather, and the sickness of other drunken members. Toward the end of the movie, the girl announces to her grandfather that she had sex the previous week - the grandfather kisses her forehead!
Perhaps the moviemaker does realize the awesome effects of the debauchery on the family.
The movie is quite dark - the female protagonist asks that she be made to cry because she has never been able to do so - the male middle aged protagonist who shrugs when asked about what work he would ever like to do in life. Neither has any sympathy for the spouses upon whom they seek to inflict public humiliation as frequently as they can - at family weddings, at family funerals, at gatherings at restaurants. When one spouse leaves after attempted suicide, there is parental indifference and smiles by the children.
**** End of Spoilers ****
This is an amazingly creepy and depressing movie.