It’s Raining Men
The fine actress Laure Calamy is left high and dry in Caroline Vignal’s ill-judged French comedy.
Image courtesy of Parkland Film Capital.
Laure Calamy has a talent that makes her one of the best actresses working in French cinema today and yet her career so far is one that has been marked by an inability to find sufficient roles that are truly worthy of her. Since making her film debut in 2001 she has certainly been busy appearing in many features and shorts together with much work done for French television. Indeed, her appearance in twenty-four episodes of the French version of Call My Agent! between 2015 and 2020 made her a well-known face. But of the feature films in which I have seen her the only one of real distinction was Eric Gravel's Full Time (2021) in which she had the leading role of a hotel chambermaid in Paris under pressure during a national strike. Her ability in drama was further proved in the same year’s My Way but that film was less well realised while The Origin of Evil (2022) was too melodramatic and contrived for my taste. Being possessed also of comedic abilities she has appeared in several lighter roles but even here has not found really rewarding material. Even so her 2020 film My Donkey, My Lover and I (also known as Antoinette dans les Cévennes) was very popular in France and that must have been an encouragement for her to reunite with that film’s writer/director Caroline Vignal in 2023 for It's Raining Men (another film given a fresh title abroad having originally been released as Iris et les hommes).
But, far from this proving a happy decision on her part, It's Raining Men finds Calamy once again displaying her gifts in material which means that she is inevitably fighting a losing battle. As Iris Beaulieu she is a married woman living in Paris who works as a dentist, has two daughters and has a husband, Stéphane (Vincent Elbaz), whose partner she became twenty years ago. But, far from this being a happy life, her relationship with Stéphane has become virtually sexless and he is continually preoccupied with his business work. The central idea of the film is that it should be an engaging lightweight comedy in which Iris faces up to this situation by setting up a dating app to meet other men. As written, the tale is one in which she is the heroine and the intention is that the audience should endorse the path that she takes. Not only is sex seen as a good healthy activity but Iris is to be applauded for finding pleasure on her own terms. Before long she is telling the men whom she meets that she is acting on the basis that she is not planning to leave her husband and that, however pleasurable an encounter proves to be, she does not intend to see any of these contacts again.
If there was once an age when sex comedies, not least those made in Hollywood, played out without any sex actually taking place, that is certainly not the case here. But, in showing Iris meeting up with a series of strangers (an undertaking which she describes as saying yes to life), the film seems blind to the danger involved. It is all very well to stress the comedy (when practising her dentistry Iris is constantly distracted by receiving messages from potential partners) and to include some stylised touches but the film still plays out in a world close enough to reality for her seeming lack of awareness of the risks she is taking to render her naive and foolish. Initially the film looks set to ignore this kind of realism entirely but then it uneasily brings in a man she meets who is into bondage. This provides a scene that is inherently heavy but which is still played for comedy including the improbable fact that his name online (‘No Vanilla’) fails to alert Iris who thinks that vanilla is only a word for a popular form of ice cream!
In effect Caroline Vignal’s film never takes off due to her inability to find a tone that would make it work. There is none of the speed of a Feydeau farce, none of the wit that might make it an appealingly artificial comedy and no ability to create subsidiary characters who contribute engagingly. One example of this is Nuria. She’s a woman who acts as a helper and receptionist in Iris's practice and she is played by Suzanne De Baecque who looks suited to a role in an Almodóvar comedy but she is given too few chances to shine. Furthermore, if the story is to make any sense at all and if its resolution is meant to feel satisfying, the screenplay needs to give some individuality and depth to the character of the husband, Stéphane, but poor Vincent Elbaz is foisted with a role that has no life in it at all.
On the few occasions when this film does offer a distinctive touch, what we get is an oddity rather than something appealing. The title which the piece now bears doubtless exists because of the sudden inclusion of a big production number featuring the song ‘It's Raining Men’ but, not being in keeping with the general style, this is just another indication that Vignal has no sense of how to give her film a consistent tone. The other memorable moment is even more weird: to incorporate late on the famous theme music by Francis Lai for A Man and a Woman (1966) might not seem that bizarre but for the fact that it mainly accompanies a montage of patients undergoing dental treatment! One can only conclude that the material was never thought through sufficiently to create a work that would possess some level on which it would cohere and engage with an audience. So, what has emerged is another film that fully attests to the skills of Laure Calamy but which adds to the number of vehicles that have failed to give her the kind of showcase – be it comic or dramatic – that she so patently deserves.
Original Title: Iris et les hommes.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Laure Calamy, Vincent Elbaz, Suzanne De Baecque, Sylvain Katan, Laurent Poitrenaux, Alexandre Steiger, Ismaël Sy Savané, Zoé Richard, Daphné Crépieux, Nicolas Gidart, Pascal Rénéric, Myriem Akheddiou, Antoine Abinal, Sarah Touffic Othman-Schmitt, César de Gouvello, Sofiane Khelladi.
Dir Caroline Vignal, Pro Laetitia Galitzine and Aurélie Rouvière, Screenplay Caroline Vignal and Noémie de Lapparent, Ph Martin Roux, Art Dir Pierre Duboisberranger, Ed Annette Dutertre, Music Benjamin Esdraffo, Costumes Marité Coutard.
Chapka Films/La Filmerie/France 3 Cinéma/Playtime/Canal+/Ciné+-Parkland Film Capital.
98 mins. France. 2023. UK Rel: 10 January 2025. Cert. 15.