Any time a film opens with a female cat meowing in heat and then cuts to the human protagonist in a similar condition in bed, you know you're in for a strange, offbeat, and most likely foreign film. That's the case with "Post Coitum," a French film whose original title includes the addition of "Animal Triste" at the end. Loosely meaning "after sex, sad animal," this is a racy, often oddly funny, but ultimately disappointing film.
Until the last third of the picture when the main character goes into a deep depression over the "loss" of her new lover, the film plays out like a no holds barred, big screen version of the TV show "Ally McBeal." If you can imagine the title character from that show ten to fifteen years from now after having traded in her law books to become a publisher, moving to France, getting married and having two kids, but still suffering from romantic angst, then you've pretty much got this movie.
Featuring similar, but not as many fantasy elements, much more explicit sexual encounters (that can't be shown on TV), and a main character who is a sexy and successful professional woman who's saddled with emotional and romantic anguish, this could easily be France's version of that show. For example, after having her romantic fire rekindled, Diane is literally on "cloud nine" as we see her floating along on a cloud a foot or so in the air -- just as you would imagine on the TV show.
In a later scene where she's despondent over having been jilted herself, she sits in a park and watches the world go by. The problem is, however, that the park is full of happy couples -- young ones, old ones, some holding hands, others making out, and the more she looks around, the more couples she sees. Even in the scene where the older woman stabs her husband in the neck with a carving fork, you expect this to be a daydream or fantasy of sorts, and it takes a while before you finally accept it as reality.
Brigitte Rouan, who not only stars in, but also directs and co-wrote the film, takes that violent and jarring scene and uses it to symbolize the central story. While such symbolism is occasionally heavy handed, for the most part it works in helping expand the main plot. In addition to having the protagonist's husband defend the woman for murdering her philandering husband -- where he gleans information on the ways and results of proving an affair -- the protagonist also has a writer client who has writer's block concerning one of his female characters because he doesn't understand women.
The best moment, however, is one of the shortest and that's when Diane's teenage son allegorically confronts her about her infidelities. He tells a brief story about a mouse that had its tail cut off while near some railroad tracks. Not noticing this until he got home, the rodent went back to the tracks looking for his tail when his head is then cut off. As his mother blankly looks at him, the son then tells her the moral of the story: "You can lose your head while chasing tail."
That's what happens to this character as she starts to lose her mind in depression as her new love leaves for a six-month job overseas and thus ends their relationship. From that moment on, the film loses all of its momentum, and while it tries to inject a few fantasy elements, they're on the somber side and can't resurrect what had been an interesting, near farce-like production. Consequently, the film never recovers from this one hundred and eighty-degree turn.
Rouan, as the main character, is quite good throughout much of the film. Since the movie never quite goes far enough in that "Ally McBeal" direction, though, the moments of her agony and anguish while writhing on her bed occasionally approach a level of ludicrousness. While we're supposed to understand that she's an addict undergoing withdrawal from her "drug" -- Emilio -- her reactions aren't quite realistic enough for these moments to be completely believable since they border on being absurd. Even so, Rouan's performance, for the most part, is compelling. The supporting performances are also good all around, with Terral convincingly playing the young stud and Patrick Chesnais delivering a believable take as the jilted husband.
What makes this film interesting is that instead of portraying the stereotypically "normal" male mid-life crisis, the tables have been turned here and it's the premenopausal woman who gets her jollies from a younger member of the opposite sex. Even so, writer/director Rouan never appears sure whether to fully embrace the "McBeal" fantasy qualities or go for a regular romantic drama, and thus the film suffers from something of an identity disorder.
Had it further continued with those imagined and symbolic moments, it might have worked better than it does. It's a decent enough film (not in morals but overall production quality), but the irresolute manner in which it proceeds will undoubtedly leave some audiences perplexed and others smirking at its goofy nature. While we understood what it's trying to do, the film doesn't quite succeed. We give "Post Coitum" a 5.5 out of 10.
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