Hidden Desires Unfold in Mesmerizing ‘Dry Cleaning’

The thickets of human desire are staples of the movie experience, but “Dry Cleaning,” an exceptional new French film, explores them with unusual insight, empathy and daring. A dark and troubling film that investigates what we accept, what we encourage, and what we finally can’t tolerate in our emotional and sexual relationships, “Dry Cleaning” mesmerizes with its ability to be both explicit and ambiguous, candid and restrained.

“Dry Cleaning” (“Nettoyage a sec” in French) is the second film for co-writer (with Gilles Taurand) and director Anne Fontaine, and on the surface it couldn’t be more different than her debut, the bright and eccentric comedy “Augustin.”

But like that film, “Dry Cleaning” displays a keen sympathy for people who live outside the norm and the ability to deal with extreme situations not with predictable cinematic exaggerations but rather with considerable sensitivity and tact.

Fontaine is helped enormously by a cast that includes Charles Berling (“Ridicule”), newcomer Stanislas Merhar and the luminous Miou-Miou (Bertrand Blier’s “Going Places” and Diane Kurys’ “Entre Nous” among others). Perfectly in tune with the director’s intentions, these actors, especially Miou-Miou in perhaps the best work of her career, give off a believability that convinces us to follow them down a psychologically winding road.

Berling and Miou-Miou play Jean-Marie and Nicole Kunstler, a hard-working French couple who run a dry-cleaning establishment in the provincial town of Belfort. Living above the store with their young son and Jean-Marie’s mother, the Kunstlers seem a contented pair whose labor-intensive work rarely allows them the luxury of time off.

On a rare night out, the couple visit a gay nightclub where they enjoy an intoxicating drag number by a two-person ensemble called the Queens of the Night. The next day, handsome young Loic (Merhar, who won a Cesar--the French Oscar--for best new actor for his performance) brings his unmistakable Queens costume into their shop for cleaning. “I’ve heard,” he says, almost reflexively flirting with both husband and wife, “you do miracles.”

Loic and his sister Marilyn (Mathilde Seigner) are the two halves of the Queens, and the first sign that their presence in the lives of Jean-Marie and Nicole will have an invigorating effect on the married couple’s sex life is when Jean-Marie surprises his wife by trying on Loic’s costume, which leads to a bout of passionate lovemaking.

Sexually active and a bit mercenary, Loic and his sister try to loosen their new friends up but in addition to attraction, there is also resistance. Still, when the Queens move on to another city, the husband and wife feel compelled, without ever acknowledging why, to take a rare vacation to catch their show.

That visit leads to an intensifying and increasingly complicated relationship between the angelic, androgynous-looking young man and both husband and wife, a tripartite relationship that is far more complex and unexpected than conventional plotting would have you imagine.

Initially, of course, there is the frisson, the whiff of excitement that clings to the danger of crossing the boundaries that separate the conventional from the forbidden, and “Dry Cleaning” manages to adroitly tantalize the audience as much as its characters.

But passions aroused can have a darker side, and the more intimately the couple get involved with Loic, the more the relationship reveals fissures in their marriage and in their lives. The question becomes not only can they go back to square one, but do they even want to.

As an intimate examination of the consequences of first exposing and then attempting to gratify longings that have remained well-hidden, this film is a knockout. As it builds toward an almost unbearable climax, “Dry Cleaning” reminds us that sometimes getting what we want or even what we need is only the beginning of the story.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: explicit scenes of heterosexual and homosexual lovemaking.

‘Dry Cleaning’

Miou-Miou: Nicole Kunstler

Charles Berling: Jean-Marie Kunstler

Stanislas Merhar: Loic

Mathilde Seigner: Marilyn

Strand Releasing presents a film by Anne Fontaine. Director Anne Fontaine. Screenplay by Anne Fontaine and Gilles Taurand. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier. Costume designer Elisabeth Tavernier. Set designer Antoine Platteau. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

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