Le Bonheur 1965 [2024]

[17]. On its surface, it is a sun-drenched, Impressionist-inspired pastoral; beneath that surface lies a "mordantly ironic" critique of male privilege expendability of women in domestic life [6, 9]. The Plot: A "Summer Peach with a Worm"

Furthermore, the film is a powerful deconstruction of the "male gaze." In Le Bonheur , the women are not individuals but objects to be looked at, possessed, and replaced. François sees both Thérèse and Émilie as vessels for his happiness. Varda, in turn, turns the camera on this very gaze, forcing the audience to witness its brutal consequences.

Varda once described Le Bonheur as "a beautiful peach with a worm inside." It remains a profoundly uncomfortable viewing experience precisely because it refuses to offer easy catharsis. There are no shouting matches, no grand retributions, and no villains to hate. There is only the terrifying, unyielding warmth of a summer day, and the realization that a man's perfect happiness can be a woman's silent graveyard. le bonheur 1965

The specific in 1960s France. Share public link

What makes Le Bonheur so unsettling—and why it remains one of the most controversial entries in the French New Wave—is Varda's refusal to moralize. François sees both Thérèse and Émilie as vessels

Available via The Criterion Collection, often streaming on Max (formerly HBO Max) or available for digital rental. Approach with caution. And plenty of sunlight.

If you are interested in exploring Agnès Varda’s work further, I can help you locate her other films or discuss her impact on the French New Wave. There are no shouting matches, no grand retributions,

Varda’s camera objectifies Jean-Claude Drouot. He is often shot in close-up, his beauty highlighted by the natural light. In 1965, this reversal of the male gaze was radical. François is presented as a beautiful object, almost simple in his desires, stripping him of the complex agency usually afforded to male protagonists.

Agnès Varda’s 1965 masterpiece, Le Bonheur (Happiness), remains one of the most provocative and visually stunning entries of the French New Wave era. While her contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut captured the gritty, monochrome restlessness of Parisian youth, Varda took a radically different approach. Shot in vibrant, hyper-saturated Eastman Color, Le Bonheur looks like a mid-century impressionist painting but cuts like a psychological thriller. It explores the terrifyingly fluid nature of human affection and the rigid societal structures that define happiness. The Plot: A Picture-Perfect Transgression

Sunflowers and other flora act as recurring visual symbols of both life and looming doom Janine Verneau's discordant editing

François is genuinely happy, yet when he begins an affair with Émilie, a postal worker, he does not feel guilt [1, 13]. Instead, he views happiness as "additive"—an apple orchard that simply gains another tree [9]. When he eventually confesses this "additional happiness" to Thérèse during a picnic, she responds with devastating silence and is later found drowned in a lake