Iris (Laure Calamy) and her husband Stéphane (Vincent Elbaz) haven’t had sex for four years. Waiting at school for the parent-teacher conference (they have well-behaved daughters aged ten and 15), she bemoans this fact to a friend, though, she maintains, she has no intention of leaving him.
“Have you considered taking a lover?” asks a mother (Olivia Côte) who’s overheard her. There are apps, she tells Iris, even ones specifically for married people. No sooner said than done. From then on, Iris’s phone doesn’t stop buzzing.
It’s Raining Men, (Iris et les Hommes is its more elegant French title) directed by Caroline Vignal, is a simplistic, insubstantial film – a bit of a missed opportunity, in fact - but the brilliant Calamy, with her infectious laugh, is its saving grace. The two worked together before in Vignal’s 2020 comedy My Donkey, My Lover and I.
Iris, aged 49, is a dentist with a long-suffering assistant, Nuria (a memorable Suzanne de Baecque). Iris attempts to take a selfie to add to her dating-app profile. “Hey,” she murmurs tentatively at her phone, then shouts it boldly, grinning wildly. Nuria comes in, looking worried, and Iris is forced to enlist her help. “I need it for DoctoLib. It’s obligatory now,” she tells her, with a shrug (pictured above).
The men come thick and fast and soon Nuria is juggling and cancelling patients as Iris gets carried away by the choice available and constantly takes time off for afternoons in various beds. When drilling teeth, she leaves her phone on – “You can turn off notifications,” Nuria explains, and is about to help her do so when, oops, a dick pic appears. Iris even reads and answers texts when patients are stuck in the chair, their mouths stretched by bite blocs into ghastly grimaces. Rescheduling appointments gets out of control. “Too much novocaine around here,” quips a desperate Nuria to a patient on the phone.
But there’s very little jeopardy here: the men are all remarkably unthreatening and pleasant. Iris remains sunny and confident, imposing her own rules – no meeting in cafes, no talking about her life, only meeting in men’s apartments and only once, even if the sex is good. And it’s certainly refreshing to see a woman so empowered and guilt-free.
But even when a guy who calls himself No Vanilla (Iris thinks he’s talking about icecream) brings out the bondage gear and she turns him down with a laugh, he’s just mildly disappointed, telling her she’s lame. It’s all so apparently insouciant, all the sex so inconsequential and glossed-over, it merits a cheesy song and dance number, namely “Il Pleut des Hommes”, with a warbling Calamy carried aloft by passers-by.
And where is the workaholic Stéphane amidst this midlife-crisis extravaganza? Always at home on his computer with his headphones on, worried about missing deadlines for a new contract, he barely notices, at first, that Iris is constantly swanning in late, full of once-removed stories about a friend and the joys of polyamory.
But even he notices something’s up in an unusually interesting scene during lunch with friends (Elbaz and Calamy, pictured above) when, instead of encouraging her daughters to learn how to say no – they’re being taught this at school and enact a funny demonstration at lunch - she launches into an empassioned diatribe about the importance of saying yes and embracing life – and sex. “If we overprotect ourselves we never do anything…you stick to us like limpets. Wouldn’t you rather be out partying, getting off with boys?” Her elder daughter flounces off to her room, disgusted with her mother, and the friends are wide-eyed with horror. Iris doesn’t stick around. Her phone is buzzing. First things first.
Things come to a head, in a mild way, when one of her first dates turns up at the dental surgery and tells her he’s left his wife. She’s unsympathetic, as she’s late for a school play. Which leads the way to the inevitable showdown with her husband. It’s a warm-hearted little movie, not without a few laughs, but with intimations of more interesting issues that are never explored. Too vanilla, in fact.
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