IRIS AND THE MEN Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Caroline Vignal
Stars: Laure Calamy, Vincent Elbaz, Suzanne De Baecque.
Charming little French romcom that deals with some troubling themes albeit in a light fashion.
Iris (played by Laure Calamy) is fifty and runs a successful dental practice in Paris but she seems to be experiencing a mid-life crisis. When the film opens Iris confesses her unhappiness to her massage therapist. Her marriage to Stephane (Vincent Elbaz) seems to have grown stale after sixteen years and they haven’t had sex for several years now. While Iris is busy with her practice Stephane is also preoccupied with his work and pays little attention to Iris’s needs.
While attending parent teacher interviews at school for their daughters, a friend suggests to Iris that she join a dating app which will satisfy her sexual needs. The friend explains how illicit relationships with bored men can spice up her life and possibly save her marriage. She signs up with a dating app called DeeLove. There follows a series of meetings with men of different ages and shapes and although Iris feels a little uncomfortable at first she never seems to be in any real danger from any of them. Experiencing a series of guilt free and anonymous one-night stands without any form of emotional commitment seems to boost Iris’s ego and reinvigorate her.
Iris And The Men reunites Calamy with writer/director Caroline Vignal, who worked with her on the comedy Antoinette In The Cervennes, and like that romcom it explores the emotional journey of a complicated woman facing an existential crisis. But this film is tonally uneven and not all of thye attempted humour lands. This is the third film from Vignal and she brings a playful touch to the material. The books that Iris reads in bed offer clues to her own feelings and frustrations. And there is an energetic and colourful French language cover of the Weathergirls’s hit It’s Raining Men (this song gives the film its alternative title). Vignal also cleverly uses the constant beeping of text alerts on Iris’s phone as a running joke throughout the film, one that pays dividends in the final scene.
Calamy has a great screen presence here, and as the film progresses she undergoes a remarkable transformation and seems to look and act more youthful. She has previously demonstrated an affinity for physical comedy in Antoinette In The Cervennes and tapped into her more dramatic chops in the suspenseful 2021 drama Full Time; her role here allows her to tap into both aspects of her talents. Her charming performance lifts the material. Elbaz offers solid support as the emotionally distant Stephane, while Suzanne De Baecque provides plenty of comedic moments as Iris’s increasingly frazzled and bemused nursing assistant Nuria who has to constantly rearrange appointments for Iris as she slips out for her extramarital encounters.
Despite its rather risque plot Iris And The Men is a slight and relatively inoffensive piece of entertainment that will put a smile on the faces of the undemanding. There is nothing particularly memorable about the film though and it is quickly forgotten upon leaving the cinema. And with a relatively brisk running time of 98-minutes it never outstays its welcome.
★★☆
