The Human Comedy: The Pessimistic Theater of Life (review)

In 2008, the director of Harmonium adapted Balzac into a three-part film, uneven but building to a crescendo, which has remained unreleased in French theaters until now

A new Kôji Fukada? Yes and no. Because although unprecedented in France, this Human comedydates back to 2008, well before he became known to the French public with Goodbye summer, Harmonium Or Run from me I am/Follow me I run from you. On this occasion, the filmmaker, who comes from a literary background, adapted for the second time (after his animated short film La Grenadière in 2005) a work by Balzac. And as the title indicates, it therefore depicts the human condition, its universal procrastination which consumes the protagonists. Solitude, communication and the state of consciousness about this common inevitability – sensitive subjects addressed in a social triptych with a form that echoes Tales of Chance and Other Fantasies of Hamaguchi where several acts are dedicated to disparate destinies which subtly intertwine.

The first story involves a theater seat lost and graciously replaced by an unknown woman who suffers the rabbit standing by her companion. In the second, we see a photographer hurt by the public failure of the opening of her new exhibition, clinging to the tiny hope that someone will deign to fill this empty room. The last addresses the recent amputation of a man’s right arm and the place that the unfortunate man wishes to give to the mutilated limb. Should we bury him? Should he be kept alive by phantom limb syndrome?

In The Human Comedy, the quality of the sections increases until this final straight line which addresses an ordinary life with an extraordinarily disturbed destiny where, brutally deprived of his right arm, a young married man must also come to terms with the happy event to come in his relationship while her infertility was proven. And where it is cleverly suggested that the arrival of someone else’s child must compensate for the disappearance of his member, the one who was the flesh of his flesh. The director perfectly sketches this deep solitude in the face of improbable situations of embarrassment which provide no escape. And just for this segment, The Human Comedy worth the detour

By Koji Fukada. With Kanji Furutachi, Makoto Adachi, Minako Inoue… Duration: 2h20. Released October 18