A famous opera singer is preparing to denounce, in the media, a list of male figures in her community who have behaved inappropriately against her throughout her career. In this anxious climate of general denunciation since “MeToo” and “BalanceTonPorc”, a production of Marriage of Figarol’opéra de Mozart tiré du Marriage of Figaroa play written by Beaumarchais, is in the process of being organized.
Directed by Mirabelle, a trendy “artist” from fashion, as crude as she is emotionally fragile, the opera promises, under her leadership, to be a crude ideological recovery aimed at denouncing “Patriarchate and male domination” – here we clearly see the ravages of university on bourgeois youth in the process of deculturation.
A project made possible by a rich patron who intends to impose his daughter among the troupe of singers and by a libidinous producer who has his sights set on Mirabelle… Not knowing quite what he has come to do in this mess, Igor, the conductor, fears for his part that he will appear in a few days on the list of “pigs” which will be disclosed in the media.
With the first assistant director and with his ex-partner Hannah, who plays Countess Almaviva in the opera, Igor is the privileged and overwhelmed witness to a scandal which is breaking out on his set: Piazzoni, the lyrical artist who plays the role of the count, is accused of having made inappropriate gestures towards the young singer who plays that of Suzanne; anger is brewing within the troop. Under pressure from Cora, the interpreter of Chérubin, everyone will have to take a stand…
These deviations that we should not talk about…
Since 2019 and its staging of Tosca pour Opera en plein aira lyrical arts festival, Agnès Jaoui planned to make a film on this environment. It is now done.
Long-métrage de fiction, The object of the crime is part of the post-MeToo era and evokes both certain male abuses and the excesses of a contemporary, revanchist and bad faith feminism. A picture that is often messy but amusing thanks to the talent of Claire Chust, Eye Haïdara, Vincenzo Amato and Daniel Auteuil. As one might imagine, the left-wing press did not necessarily appreciate the criticism of neo-feminism; L’Obs talks about “casualness and blindness, embarrassing to say the least» when others, just as pinched, point out a lack of «nuance»…
Jaoui, however, shares with them the same overall reading of male-female relationships: “ The demand for equality between men and womenshe says in the press kit, date of the birth of humanity, we notice that each advance is never definitively acquired and that archaic reflexes remain… »
Confused ideas and positioning issues
Besides the fact that she in no way questions the reasons for this persistent archaism, which it seems absolutely necessary to combat, Agnès Jaoui commits a fundamental analytical error in her reading of the Marriage of Figaro. She seems to believe, in an interview, that Beaumarchais’ play contains a feminist discourse. However, this is not so much a criticism of male domination over women as of class domination on the eve of the French Revolution, the right of cooking that the count seeks to reestablish being mainly a symbol of the enslavement of the serf by the nobility. Right of cooking which, that said in passing, was never legislated and whose application was in no way systematic…
Misunderstood by many journalists on her side, Agnès Jaoui can only blame herself and the confusion of her ideas. Because taken as is, his film seems clearly more virulent with regard to political correctness than his public declarations. A striking example: Mirabelle’s choice of staging, which consists of having giant phalluses installed on stage to over-signify male domination, has all the makings of a mockery on screen but, according to Agnès Jaoui’s comments to journalists, seems to find favor in her eyes: “These phallusesshe said, are for me a metaphor for the omnipotence and omnipresence of patriarchy, and the difficulty of changing it, of finding new models of virility. » The gap between the statements she makes and the tone of her film is yawning. In fineone never knows where the satire stops and frank support begins. It’s rather disconcerting.
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2 stars out of 5
