Not only lost, but mad. There is no sanity in his intense focus. Is she mad? She must be. But they're both so happy. Real life hardly seems to be a factor. We never see them eat. We never see them sleep. We know they live in a room above the shop, but we don't see it.
Their days pass in a serene parade, sometimes enlivened by his fondness for dancing to recordings of the music of "The Arabian Nights." He can't dance, as he is the first to admit. But what he does is wonderful, and Rochefort's gyrations, always with a solemn face, are very funny. Why this music? Why this dance? Why do we need to ask?
She smiles. She is radiant. She is kind, gentle, sexy. They are always in heat. While she is performing a shampoo, he kneels on the floor behind her and caresses her to ecstasy. They make love on the red leather bench. They're in full view, but nobody ever seems to see them. They make each other very happy.
Leconte, working from his own screenplay, interrupts their solitude with customers. Two inseparable friends, always deep in a dispute. A little boy who does not want to have his hair cut. A husband who dashes in to hide from his fearsome wife, who follows him. There aren't a lot of customers, which is all right with them. She is patient, attentive, expert. He is tactful and always helpful. The sun shines in. Their wedding day takes place in the shop, with old Monsieur Ambroise in attendance.
In a rare visit outside the shop one Sunday afternoon, they visit Ambroise in the retirement home where he lives. He observes that the home's gardens, so well-tended, have a sort of film over them, an aura: "These are the last trees and flowers these old people will ever see." He is not consoled by retirement. He was happy, now he is lonely. His relatives visit, but are impatient to leave. In such small dark clouds as these, Leconte allows his lovers to observe that nothing is forever.
Patrice Leconte is a director who should be better known. Like Ang Lee, he never repeats himself. Each film seems a fresh start from a new idea. His flawless "Monsieur Hire" (1989) is also about a fetishist -- a voyeur. That is its only similarity with "The Hairdresser's Husband." His "Ridicule" (1996), set at the court of Louis XVI, involved a provincial farmer, much agitated about the need for irrigation. Told that the king listens to no one who doesn't amuse him, he learns to be funny. He was never funny before. "The Widow of Saint-Pierre" (2000), based on a true story, involves a man condemned to the guillotine on a remote French island off Canada. The colony lacks a guillotine. The courts are sticklers for the letter of the law. The condemned man and the warden's wife undergo a transformation during the wait for the guillotine to arrive from France. It is very deep and moving.
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