VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

christopher-underwood Watching this film the last time, some 45 years ago, upon it's original UK release, I was blown away. I felt I had never seen such beautiful sunny summer images, I was astonished at the use of posters and advertising hoardings for composition. I notice now that some of these aspects have coloured my own photographic sensitivities. I remember the film as one long celebration of happiness and the suggestion that with the right attitude life would be like this. Seeing it again, it is still undoubtedly beautiful and I possibly appreciate even more the wonderful cinematography, however, now I notice how subversive this movie is. I have a feeling that this is very much a personal film seen through Varda's eyes and she is suggesting that a woman might easily do as the second woman does in this without causing so much as a head to turn. I think not, this is fantasy. The guy is unreal, men don't lie around saying how happy they are all the time, never mind the way he fails to be affected by the incident. I imagine at the time I saw this as a depiction of a real possibility. I seem to remember thinking lots of things were possible in the 60s that have turned out not to be. Nevertheless, this is still a beautiful movie,

kinsayder François leads an idyllic life full of happiness. He loves his wife and their young children; he enjoys his work as a carpenter; and the country town where he lives is awash with sunshine and smiling faces. So when he meets a pretty girl working at the post office, what could be more natural and right than to take a further sip from the bowl of happiness?Le Bonheur is a delicious sugar-coated bonbon with a bitter centre. What disturbs the viewer most is the cool unjudging gaze of Varda's camera: the characters are naive but not cruel, and when tragedy strikes it comes about from a childlike pursuit of happiness. Then the seasons change, and life continues with no-one wiser than before...The emphatic pastel colour palette of the film, and the music of Mozart that plays insistently throughout, are beautiful and cloyingly seductive. They entice us into the innocent fantasy world of François, where all it takes to do the right thing is to follow your desires. What could possibly go wrong?Le Bonheur is an exquisite, delicate, ambiguous masterpiece of the type that Hollywood was, is and always will be incapable of producing.

zetes **SPOILERS**You could tell that Agnes Varda had half of a great idea going into this film, but she never panned it out to its fullest extent. It begins interestingly enough, and progresses so for about half an hour or forty-five minutes. Then it plateaus and nothing very important comes of it. The story has a young married man, Francois, who is in a state of perfect happiness with his beautiful, down-to-earth wife and two beautiful young children (these four are played by an actual married couple, the Drouots, and their children). On the job, Francois begins to run into a postal clerk named Emilie. He's attracted to her and thinks to himself, "Hey, I'm happy, but if I can make myself happier still, is there any harm?" So he starts to date her without losing an iota of interest in his wife. SPOILERS. Eventually, he decides to tell his wife, and he does so guiltlessly. She seems to take it well, and the two make love in an idyllic, pastoral setting. After their lovemaking, Francois falls asleep. When he awakens, she has drowned herself (apparently). Several months later, Francois and Emilie marry and she becomes a mother to the two children, working her hardest at taking the role. As the film ends, we realize that she has incorporated herself into the family perfectly and everything is back to normal. They will live happily ever after, or at least I didn't see any real foreshadowing of future tragedies.Now, my first instinct is to take the film as being slightly ironic. Wouldn't you think a woman director would want to satirize this man and his rather selfish attitude? Perhaps Varda thinks that a lot of men feel that they should be able to, or at least could successfully love two women at once. There's never a hint that either Francois' wife or Emilie would ever take another lover themselves. They are both absurdly selfless. Emilie totally accepts her position as the paramour. The wife does at first, of course, but it was only a lie so she could punish him. Even more ironic and unfair is that Francois only barely suffers from her death. Even their children seem wonderfully happy next to the indirect and direct causes of their mother's death.However, I'm fairly sure that the audience isn't supposed to hate Francois. In reality, it seems to me that Varda was trying to challenge social conventions and that she herself is asking why a man can't be perfectly happy loving two women. If this is the case, and it did seem so to me, I feel that Varda is just being a bit facetious. Francois is not a very believable character. He spouts some very ridiculous philosophy about why he should follow his heart and love both women. The audience, in fact, often laughed at these thoughts, because they were, in truth, silly. Francois, at times, seems absolutely naïve. Perhaps this is more support for my first interpretation. But if that were true, the movie still doesn't work. To satirize a kind of person, it's best to have them even remotely believable, which Francois, as I have stated, is not.Even if this film does fail in its narrative, it is still well worth seeing. It is perhaps best known for being Varda's first film in color. I saw an absolutely beautiful print: this woman knows how to use the format. It's all so vibrant; the colors are not exaggerated, but they're composed in such a way that they stand out almost in three dimensions. And she uses these beautiful fades to green, red, blue, white, and so forth. 7/10.

hphillips Similar in many ways to the fantastic "Cléo de 5 à 7", a charming, mature and playful look at temptation and marriage.Not only great for it's chromatic & musical scales (color-fades, very colorful scenes are organized like moments withing a musical composition), the dialogues are right on as well - at first, it might seem a little 'sappy', but with 15minutes, you're enraptured!