Director: Caroline Vignal (France). Year of Release: 2023
An osteopath is mauling the body of one of his female patients. To keep her mind occupied and to distract her from the fact that she’s lying there in her underwear, he makes bland small talk. How’s her health? How is life going for her? Does she have children? She replies with a variety of synonyms for “mustn’t grumble”. The scene is long, and protracted, and – it must be said – pretty boring, maybe to emphasize the embarrassment of the situation.
Then the osteopath asks how things are going with her husband. “They’re not”, she says, almost immediately regretting that she’d finally answered a question honestly. We later learn that Iris and her husband have not had sex in 4 years. Every evening he sits in bed typing into his laptop, while she reads a hardback book about sexual politics or relationships. After a while, they both turn off the bedside lights and go to sleep.
At a parents’ evening at school, Iris has a similar conversation with one of her friends. She explains that she still loves her husband, but is feeling a little fulfilled. When the friend gets called away, another parent – an older woman – sidles up to Iris and asks if she’s tried taking a lover? The woman proceeds to go on at length about dating apps, and how setting up illicit relationships with bored men can save a marriage. The apps even have a section for married women now.
In many ways, this scene typifies It’s Raining Men. Do you find the idea of an older woman talking about sex hilarious? Are you intrigued by these new-fangled dating apps? Do you want to be slightly scandalized but not taken any way out of your comfort zone? Then this may well be the film for you. For the rest of the film, we accompany Iris as she sets up dates with a series of men who may be disappointing but are never dangerous.
At first, Iris (or Isis as she calls herself online) enjoys the attention which the dates provide – for most of the time at least. On the first date, with a man so needy that he texts her at 10 second intervals, she impetuously suggests going to his house for sex. When he reminds her that he’s married, and the babysitter is at home, she drowns in embarrassment. By the time he’s suggesting an alternative sex date the following week, she’s already halfway out the door.
From then on, Iris starts to gain confidence and take control. She sets up a series of dates with different men – some older, some younger, some richer, some poorer (though no-one too ugly or poverty stricken), and makes up some rules about not referring to her home life of family during the date. Just about at the film’s half way point, she leads an outdoor dance to the titular Weather Girls song, with new lyrics in French about the diversity of her conquests.
While some dates are more exciting than others, you never get the feeling that Iris is in any danger. When one spurned lover confronts her alone in her office, there’s the slightest hint of violence before she gently accompanies him outside. Similarly, when she hooks up with someone with the pseudonym “No Vanilla”, who encourages her into BDSM, at first she agrees but then changes her mind. He shrugs, saying it’s no fun if both partners are not consensual.
This results in a blandness which removes any dramatic tension. Ultimately, we know that Iris will land in the arms of her loving husband by the end (sorry if that’s a plot spoiler, but we know). Although there is quite a lot of sex, we never see Iris actually enjoying herself, so there’s no real sense why she carries on with her assignments. We are witnessing a mid-life crisis, a little bit of ennui, but nothing which has any serious implications for anyone.
Unusually, for a film dentist – no Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man or Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors here – Iris is unthreatening and approachable, amicably chatting with her patients as she stuffs cotton wool in their mouths. But as she gets more preoccupied with online dating she does start to interrupt operations to respond to an incoming message on her phone or cancel appointments after she is offered a romantic rendezvous.
Iris’s problematic working methods start to irritate her assistant Nuria, whose workload is increased by having to cancel and reorganise meetings whenever Iris has a spontaneous invite for a hook up. Nuria increasingly has to hold the fort while Iris goes gallivanting. One day, Nuria has had enough, and tells her boss that she can take it any more and she’s quitting. Of course, she turns up for work the next day. This is not the sort of film which allows any real conflict.
It’s Raining Men reunites director Caroline Vignal with lead actor Laure Calamy, who starred in her previous film My Donkey, My Lover and I. That film was unexciting, but kept its head above water by Calamy’s engaging performance. Once more, Calamy, as Iris, is perfectly likeable, but the uninspiring plot means that there’s nothing about her that makes you care what happens to her. Iris’s problems are so trivial that no amount of fretting about them make them seem important.
So, what is the film trying to say? On one level, it’s a simple story about how successful middle class women get lonely too, but there’s a more pernicious side. One day at the dinner table (we have lots of dinner table scenes), Iris’s cute daughter is imitating her teacher in a recent level where she showed the kids how to put on condoms then told the girls how they can say “No”. Iris explodes, screaming that some times girls must be allowed to say “Yes!”
In a different film, this could have been a liberating plea for female sexual autonomy. However, in a context of a film which refuses to countenance even the idea of male sexual predators, it is one extra way of blaming women and girls for any unwanted harassment. This is typical of a film which may initially appear to be liberated, but whose inner conservatism means that it carries deeply reactionary values. On top of this, the lack of anything unexpected makes it deeply boring.
CinePhil 