Synopsis
One day, on a whim, Marc decides to shave off the moustache he's worn all of his adult life. He waits patiently for his wife's reaction, but neither she nor his friends seem to notice. Stranger still, when he finally tells them, they all insist he never had a moustache. Is Marc going mad? Is he the victim of some elaborate conspiracy? Or has something in the world's order gone terribly awry?
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Cast
- Vincent LindonMarc Thiriez
- Emmanuelle DevosAgnès Thiriez
- Mathieu AmalricSerge Schaeffer
- Hippolyte GirardotBruno
- Cylia MalkiSamira
- Macha PolikarpovaNadia Schaeffer
- Fantine CamusLara Schaeffer
- Frédéric ImbertyPatron café
- Brigitte BémolPolicière
- Denis MénochetServeur
Recommendations
- 80
Village Voice
A successful novelist and restrained actor's director, Carrére makes the transformation of a silly marital argument into a cosmic upheaval look easy, and profound as well. - 80
The New York Times
No matter how serious it becomes, however, La Moustache never forsakes an underlying attitude of high-style playfulness that recalls Hitchcock's cat-and-mouse romantic thrillers. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Unlike, say, David Cronenberg, who manages to establish a crucial, critical distance between his audience and his schizophrenic protagonist in his adaptation of Patrick McGrath's similarly themed "Spider," Carrere re-creates the insane mind through his camera, and diffuses his point about subjective experience by inadvertently raising questions about truth and the movies. - 75
New York Post
Vincent Lindon, one of France's leading actors, is super as Marc, a man on a downward spiral into insanity. And Emmanuelle Devos is comforting as Marc's loving wife. - 75
The A.V. Club
La Moustache recalls the "everyday suspense" films of Roman Polanski and the existential woe of Michelangelo Antonioni, but it isn't as strange or penetrating as the former, or as artfully shot as the latter. - 70
Chicago Reader
This narrative feature debut by Emmanuel Carrere, based on his own novel, is deliberately open-ended, but however one interprets the outcome, the film reminds us how fragile intimacy is. - 70
Variety
Viewers who like their conclusions tidy may rebel, but those who relish outstanding performances in the service of an intriguing idea will be entertained. - 70
L.A. Weekly
The pleasure of La Moustache is that it doesn't feel the need to explain itself at every turn. Part absurdist comedy about the institution of marriage, part paranoid Kafkaesque fantasy, it's a minor-key reverie on the way our own lives can sometimes feel alien to us.
