A Testimony Against Men

IN THE OPENING scene of My Other Husband, French actress Miou-Miou, yupped-out in a sleek business suit, pushes her way through a bustling Paris street crowd. This scene pretty much sets the tone for the film that follows--or more accurately, falters--thereafter: This is a movie about a woman who is cramped, hassled and always in a hurry.

And why wouldn't she be? Looking like a young and slightly prettier Shirley Jones (an image that is heightened by a movie that's as episodic and nearly as plausible as The Partridge Family), Miou-Miou plays Alice, a woman who spends three days a week in Paris with her airline pilot husband Philippe (Roger Hanin) and three days a week in out-of-the-way Trouville with her other husband, school-teacher Vincent (Eddy Mitchell).

NOW. FOR those of you not mathematically inclined, this leaves Alice with one day a week to a) commute; b) recuperate; or c) (the correct choice) carry on an additional flirtation in Paris with a plastic surgeon (Francois Perrot) to whom she's a scrub nurse and whom she eventually accompanies for a few days in Nice.

To top it all off, Alice, who has not only a husband but also a hospital job in both ports, is also the mother of three. Simon (Rachid Ferrauche), her Parisian 10-year-old by Philippe, is not only quite pale but also slightly pink, and already attending socialist rallies and talking proletariat revolution. With Vincent, in the more sedate suburbs, she has a boy and a girl who are bratty in a more usually puerile sense.

Before I go on, are you still with me?

If so, understand that until now the movie has not become altogether implausible. We are still able to believe that through some incredible machinations and feminine wiles, the 1980s woman might be able to pull off this dual lifestyle.

The movie becomes unbelievable as we get to know her two husbands because we cannot understand why Alice could want either, much less both, of these worthless men.

Although aged considerably in this movie by slightly bleached hair and a stoically dazed countenance, Miou-Miou is still beautiful (in an oh-so-French way) with her sucked in cheeks and endless legs. It is obvious to us that she can have as many numbskulls like her husbands as she wants, but by the same token we don't understand why she wants either of them.

ALICE HERSELF remains subdued and sleekly elegant against the odds of a double-life and a harrowing operation-room job, while her husbands are both puffy-faced, big-nosed, blustering and apopleptic. Between his son's radical politics and a six-million-franc lawsuit he's filed, Philippe is in a constant, hopeless rage; while Vincent, with a bouffant hairdo that looks like Jerry Lee Lewis gone awry is forever out-of-control over his out-of-control students.

Opposites may attract, but fire and ice just don't mix; one melts the other.

Which may explain why Miou-Miou waltzes through the ever-changing locations of this movie looking like she's going to melt. After a remarkable performance in last year's Entire Nous, she must be credited with playing Alice as believably as is possible. In scene after scene, she is able to tell whichever husband she is away from that she misses him with a fair degree of sincerity.

In one of the movie's rare believable scenes, Alice's Parisian son, left alone while Philippe is in flight, calls her at the hospital in Trouville, first because the stove is broken and then for help on his homework. Realizing she can do nothing for him, Alice breaks down into anguished, frustrated tears. This is the only sign in the film that Alice is at all torn by her two lives. But it still doesn't convey why she's allowing herself to be torn between two complete losers. The movie is completely devoid of psychology.

FOR THEIR PART, the two actors portray the husbands to look, accurately, like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. In one of the movie's funnier scenes--the proverbial railroad station scene--the husbands cross paths en route to a train and realize they are wearing matching punctuation mark sweaters. Philippe's sweater has an exclamation point on it, which defines him perfectly as he rants and raves through the movie as a know-nothing know-it-all. Vincent's sweater, however, bears a question mark because his ranting and raving springs from his utter cluelessness. What a pair.

The only hint we are given about why Alice might be holding on to both her bumbling fools comes from her interplay with her two women friends. Cynthia (Charlotte de Turckheim), whose job seems to amount to hosing down naked men in a Trouville hospital, marries a weather forecaster who has a nervous breakdown during the wedding ceremony and returns to his ex-wife shortly afterwards. Solange (Dominique Lavanant), a flautist in a not-ready-for-prime-time orchestra, always seems to be stuck in sad love triangles or with married men and constantly worries that she will end up an old maid while her biological clock ticks away.

Obviously, we think as we watch the other two women, Alice is married to two men to assure beyond any doubts that she won't have to deal with any other men.

My Other Husband, much like Entre Nous, seems to be a testimony against men. Alice's two absurd mates, surprisingly, are the best of the bunch. But the film can't decide whether it wants to be a satirical farce or a movie with a purpose, and it ends up being neither funny nor meaningful.