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Whatever
France 1999
Reviewed by Ginette Vincendeau
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Paris, the present. Though successful at work, a middle-aged executive, working in IT, has been living a socially and sexually barren life ever since his partner left him. This nameless protagonist loses his car, visits a client who stands him up, has dinner with a priest friend and visits a department store. At various points, he takes sleeping pills, watches porn, masturbates and vomits. He also fantasises about his female colleagues.
On a trip to western France with a colleague, Tisserand, the hero has a mild heart attack, but recovers. Both men fail to pick up women. The hero buys a knife and incites Tisserand to rape a young woman making love with her partner in the sand dunes, then to kill the couple. Tisserand can't go through with it. Later, Tisserand is killed in a car crash unwittingly caused by the hero's call to his mobile phone. The hero goes back to work but sinks into deeper depression. After he has violent fantasies about mutilated women, he checks into a clinic. A female psychiatrist fails to get through to him. He is last seen taking dancing lessons and smiling at his pretty female partner, who smiles back at him.
Review
Whatever is closely based on a novel by Michel Houellebecq, one of France's literary sensations in the 90s. Houellebecq is best known for his later book, Les Particules élémentaires - fleetingly alluded to in the film - which created an enormous stir with its deep pessimism, obscenity and mercilessness. While Houellebecq is mainly criticised for his misogyny, his hatred is not confined to women, and he has made political incorrectness his credo: "It is true that gays exasperate me, just as blacks, ecologists, dykes and so on get on my nerves..." he has said. "Each time I see tribal behaviour I become sarcastic and vicious." Even in its moments of intended comedy, the film taps into this sensibility. At one point, the hero slaps a woman who asked him to put out his cigarette, provoking hilarity among the other characters. The presentation of the woman as a prissy frump clearly invites the spectator to side with the hero.
Philippe Harel, known in France for his 1997 hit comedy Les Randonneurs (about a hiking trip in Corsica) at first seems an odd choice for directing, and starring in, a Houellebecq adaptation. Until, that is, one sees pictures of Houellebecq and Harel - both dark, slim middle-aged men with a receding hairline. French reviewers have all noted how Harel, who plays the hero in the film, adopts Houellebecq's mannerisms, including his idiosyncratic way of holding his cigarette. And like Harel's 1998 feature, La Femme défendue, Whatever sticks determinedly to a first-person male perspective, with long stretches of the film overlaid with extracts of Houellebecq's writing.
Given its literary, solipsistic nature, Houellebecq novel doesn't lend itself to film adaptation. Thanks to the director's gloomy performance and José Garcia's moving turn as the hero's colleague Tisserand, Harel doesn't entirely fail in his ambitious enterprise. There are also a few funny vignettes where Harel's comic talent as a director surfaces, notably, the cringingly embarrassing training sessions the hero and Tisserand conduct, or their doomed attempts to pick up women in grim provincial bars. But such sharp scenes are mere comic relief in Houellebecq's grand pessimistic narrative where everybody - especially women - and everything is a target for the hero's ennui and disgust.
Embedded in this totalising malaise is a theory: ultra-liberal capitalism is paralleled by (and perhaps has produced) a similarly deregulated sexual economy; here, there are the ultra-rich (those with a varied, exciting sexual life) and the ultra-poor (those with none). The notion that the new 'free' sexual mores entail an inexorable extension of the sexual battle (which the film's French title Extension du domaine de la lutte, loosely translated as 'Extending the battle', makes clear) is an interesting insight. The film's early representation of the hero's face superimposed on a soulless high-rise block, its wicked satire of the corporate world and of a harsh society (motorists fail to stop when the sick hero is on the brink of collapse in the streets of Rouen) provide a considered grounding to this analysis.
However, this reasoning is viewed from a wholly male perspective, one in which women are described verbally and visually in terms of their genitalia, or "hole" as it's referred to. "How can one forget the vacuity of a vagina?" intones the hero who vomits after fantasies of, or encounters with, women. The voiceover resonates with a backlash sensibility: "Men," he says, "are the ultimate residues of the feminist fallout." And as these women withhold their sexuality from the hero and his friend, the 'solution' (which isn't presented as entirely fanciful) is to grab it back from them violently. In this respect, Whatever would seem to fit in with recent French films such as Seul contre tous and Baise-moi, in which sex and violence are linked in a seemingly inescapable dynamic. So while the film presents a subversive stance by featuring quotes by radical philosophers (Schopenhauer, Kant) and pushes censorship boundaries through its inclusion of pornographic imagery, it ends up supporting a reactionary analysis of social relations and advocating mindless violence.
Unlike Seul contre tous and Baise-moi, however, Whatever confines its violence to fantasy and would seem to provide a glimpse of hope at the end. But after an hour and 45 minutes of self-indulgent pessimism (or "depressionism" - a word which has been applied to Houellebecq), of unrelenting misogyny and misanthropic ranting, what weight can we give to the final images of an apparently content hero smiling sweetly at his dancing partner?
Credits
- Director
- Philippe Harel
- Producer
- Adeline Lecallier
- Adaptation/Dialogue
- Philippe Harel
- Michel Houellebecq
- Based on the novel by
- Michel Houellebecq
- Director of Photography
- Gilles Henry
- Editor
- Bénédicte Teiger
- Art Director
- Louise Marzaroli
- ©Lazennec Films/Le Studio Canal+
- Production Companies
- Lazennec presents in co-production with Le Studio Canal+ and the participation
- of Canal+
- Associate Producers
- Alain Rocca
- Christophe Rossignon
- Bertrand Faivre
- Production Manager
- Ève Machuel
- Unit Production Manager
- Christophe Desenclos
- Unit Manager
- Laurence Thibault
- Location Manager
- Natacha Yevou
- Assistant Directors
- Jérôme Zajdermann
- Gérôme Rivière
- Rouen:
- Ingrid Gogny
- La Roche/Yon:
- Philippe Guiheneuf
- Script Supervisor
- Bénédicte Teiger
- Casting Director
- Marie de Laubier
- Camera Operator
- Olivier Raffet
- Costumes
- Anne Schotte
- Key Make-up
- Corinne Maillard
- Titles/Opticals
- Marchetti
- Music Consultant
- Charles Henri de Pierrefeu
- Soundtrack
- "Ma Peugeot 104", "Lutte finale", "Cybercraft" - Navis; "Cha Cha Cha des Thons" - Léo Missir; "Rock It Tonight (House par Mix Aleem)" - Seven Dub; "Groove la Musique" - Theleme; "Mauvais Coton" - Juan Rozoff; "Mes rêves" - Ysa Ferrer; "I'm Not Messin' Around" - Joe Louis Walker; "Ça se passe" - D. Abuz System; "I'm Not in Love" - 10cc; "Freedom" - Doctor L.; "Babylon Loves Us (Remix par Paris Angeles)" - The Julia Set; "Existence" - Bugge Wesseltoft; J.S. Bach's "Christ lag in Todesbaden" from "La Cantate BW 4" - Munich Bachorchester; "Stille Nacht" by T. Grüber - Chur des Petits Chanteurs de Chaillot; Bizet's "Les Pêcheurs de perles" - Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse & JohnAler; Waldteufel's "Amour et Printemps" - Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
- Sound Engineers
- Joël Flescher
- Ricardo Castro
- Mixer
- Thierry Delor
- Sound Editor
- Thomas Desjonquères
- Sound Effects
- Nicolas Becker
- Cast
- Philippe Harel
- Our Hero
- José Garcia
- Raphaël Tisserand
- Catherine Mouchet
- the psychologist
- Cécile Reigher
- Catherine Lechardey
- Marie Charlotte LeClaire
- H. La Brette's secretary
- Philippe Agael
- Henri La Brette
- Alain Guillo
- Buvet
- Yvan Garouel
- Ministry representative
- Christophe Rossignon
- Bernard
- Nicolas Simon
- Schnabele
- Philippe Staw
- the psychiatrist
- Jean-Luc Abel
- Metro beggar
- Constantine Attia
- Malibu bouncer
- Michka Assayas
- information officer
- Philippe Barrier
- serpent's acolyte
- Émilie Benoit
- Metro woman
- Marc Bonnel
- Norbert Lejailly
- Géraldine Bonnet-Guerin
- secretary with high heels
- Jean-Pierre Bourdaleix
- DDA employee, Rouen
- Pierre Brichese
- DDA director
- Édith Brunner
- Bernadette
- Fabrice Carlier
- rocking patient
- Alexandre Caumartin
- Mercure waiter
- Sophie Caritté
- Mercure receptionist
- Francine Chevalier
- ministry receptionist
- Stéphane Chomant
- sleepwalking young man
- Lili Cognard
- first pair of legs
- Jean-Michel Cannone
- doctor
- Julie Delafosse
- pseudo Véronique
- Sonia Delait
- woman at Monoprix
- Maryse Déol
- second pair of legs
- Roger Dolléans
- dance teacher
- Éric Doncarli
- salesman at brasserie
- Simon Doniol-Valcroze
- hospital intern
- Julie Dray
- young girl in tanga
- Émeline Drouin
- rock dancer
- Michèle Ernou
- Schnabele's secretary
- Stéphanie Gesnel
- nurse at switchboard
- Nathalie Grauvin
- girl who undresses
- Nicolas Guillot
- Ministry representative
- Jacques Hery
- hospital room neighbour
- Michèle Hery
- hospital room neighbour's wife
- Élizabeth Holzle
- girl in the corridor
- Michel Jeanjean
- pensioner in pyjamas
- Pierre Johann
- agricultural socialist
- Aliette Anglolff
- sleepwalking young girl
- Philippe Lemercier
- dentist
- Marie-Louise Lepelle
- nurse
- Françoise Loreau
- Madame Duval
- Ona Luambo
- halfcaste
- Frédérique Marlot
- student on train
- Marc Marcillac
- Our Hero's neighbour
- Philippe Marteau
- duty intern
- Patrick Mazet
- Conforama salesperson
- Isabelle Mazin
- nurse in canteen
- Jean-Luc Mimo
- taxi driver
- Karin Palmieri
- secretary
- Claire Ruppli
- secretary who is slapped
- Marie-Christine Robert
- nurse at convalescent home
- Delphine Valette
- Our Hero's partner
- Philippe Bianco
- narrator
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Artificial Eye Film Company
- 10,847 feet
- 120 minutes 32 seconds
- Dolby Digital
- In Colour
- Subtitles
- French theatrical title
- Extension du domaine de la lutte