An Amazing Couple (Un couple épatant)---Trilogy Part 2

Directed and Written by Lucas Belvaux

Starring: Ornella Muti, François Morel, Valérie Mairesse, Bernard Mazzinghi, Georges Colinet and Dominique Blanc

Runtime: 97 min

Rating—PG-13?

French with English sub-titles

The second part of the amazing trilogy by Lucas Belvaux, “An Amazing Couple,” is a light-hearted and slightly whacky romantic comedy of a misunderstanding of fidelity between the rich and beautiful Cécile Costes (played by the stunning Ornella Muti) and the absent minded but equally rich and beautiful Alain Costes (played by the charming and boyish François Morel).  Cécile and Alain live in a sumptuous villa overlooking the city and the movie opens with a most pleasant surprise party for Alain, who seems to be a little preoccupied as of late.  He is preoccupied because he is going to have minor surgery at the hands of Dr. Colinet (Bernard Mazzinghi), who, in the third movie, refuses to provide morphine for another guest at the party, Agnès Manise, causing her to pass out in the throes of withdrawal.  But the audience doesn’t know that yet, unless they were very astute in watching the first movie, or happened to see the third movie first.  Such is the way of the world in Belvaux’ fantastic trilogy.

The audience doesn’t know about Agnès because this is not her movie, it is Cécile’s and Alain’s movie, at least in the main, and it is about a dizzy love affair that ends with everyone living happily ever after.  Quite unlike the first movie, starring Lucas Belvaux, or the third movie, starring Dominique Blanc, other two movies in the group.  So the tragic figures of the failed social liberator Bruno Le Roux and his former lover and partner Jeanne Rivet will have to stay in the shadows, as will Agnès.  The players are in this movie, but their plots are not revealed, except for what the audience infers or remembers from the other movies in the group.

Other than Alain acting like a foolish imbecile because of his ridiculous hypochondria, everything is fine until Agnès passes out.  She is quickly whisked away by her police detective husband Pascal Manise (played by Gilbert Melki) and that’s essentially the last we see of her until the third film.  What we do see is, though, is Cécile’s flirtatious and even seductive interaction with the wise and debonair Dr. Colinet, and her similar flirtations with Agnès husband, the daring and swarthy Pascal.  Throughout the movie she uses both of these connections in an attempt to prove her suspicions, that her husband is loving another woman, only to be led on a series of laughable dead-ends, while Pascal struggles with his moral obligations to his profession and his loyalty to his addicted wife.

As Pascal is tempted by Cécile’s beauty, we see he things on his mind other than her.  He is dealing with several different devils on several different fronts.  There is a murder and a fire, caused by an unknown perpetrator who may be the same man who recently escaped from prison: an obscure terrorist on the lam.  Hiding out in the holes and dungeons of the urban underworld.  But those things recede into the background, only his passion for Alain’s wife comes to the surface.

But that is Lucas Belvaux’ world, in this, the second of the three movies of the trilogy.  The fact that identical actors, roles, make-up, lines and scenes are used on at least three occasions in each of the three movies is somewhat remarkable.  But what elevates the effect to the fantastic is that fact that each story is completely separate from the other.  In fact, each is of a completely different genre from the other.  The first being a crime drama, the second a light hearted romantic comedy and the third a melodrama of the most severe proportions.

We know almost nothing of Le Roux in the second movie, when he is hiding out under an assumed identity in the ski chalet of the rich and beautiful Cécile.  The only reason she is there is to sniff out the whereabouts of her bat-brained hubby.  But, what-ho, there is a strange man in the chalet.  She almost kicks him out, but reconsiders at the last minute (lucky for Le Roux, because he would have been arrested in the first movie and the film would have been over before its time). 

A light-weight movie that is made somewhat heavier by the implied plots in its predecessor, “An Amazing Couple” finds a lot of its power in its contrast to the other two parts of the trilogy.  How is it possible to tell an important story and, at the same time, show that the story is nearly meaningless to most people?  Even matters of life and death are only passing phases in the lives of bystanders.  Is the audience the bystander in this movie, or the insider?

Only in the third movie do all of the plots converge and reconcile for all six characters, for better or for worse.  There will be few theatres in the country that will have the nerve to show all three of these great movies together in one showing (as a group they won the French equivalent of the “Best Picture” Oscar), a back-to-back movie marathon of nearly six hours.  But even if only one is showing, don’t miss the chance to see it.  The rest will come out later on video, or perhaps another theatre will show them.  But one thing is for certain, each one is a gem in itself and, as a group, they are simply without compare.