The next few films are part of a tribute season I’d planned to coincide with Parasite that never came to pass in the cinema, but they’re all irresistible takes on someone insidiously invading your home, so why not have the fun as a written series? The next two are Joseph Losey’s The Servant (just added to MUBI’s new library feature) and Andrzej Zulawaski’s Possession (I’d also planned to show Chameleon Street in this series, picking up the con artists theme, and you can read about that one here).
Michel (Laurent Lucas) and Claire (Mathilde Seigner) overheat as they wend their way to their country escape, a property equal parts salvation and millstone. Stopping at a service station to arrest their children’s meltdown, Michel is surprised in the toilet to be acquainted with Harry (Sergi López), uncannily doubled in the bathroom mirror. Initially unable to place him from their school days, he agrees to invite him and his girlfriend Plum (Sophie Guillemin) to see their getaway. Harry begins to remind Michel of his youthful literary talents, able to recite a school magazine poem and wondering whether Michel ever completed a sci fi novel about flying monkeys (as with Reynolds Woodcock’s dress designs in Phantom Thread, it’s left to viewers to decide whether the writing is a work of genius or not; either way, it’s enough that they are the film’s animating force). Michel is abashed, barely able to remember this writing and definitively not looking to add ‘struggling author’ to life’s rich tapestry of fatherhood, work and renovation. Harry, inheritor of great wealth and lover of ‘solutions’, sees this as an invitation to remove all obstacles to Michel’s true path as a writer. First he buys a 4x4 for his young family, to Claire’s embarrassment. Then, sensing that Michel’s parents are a burden to him, he lures them out on a nightime drive and rams them into a ravine. This is the beginning of a series of extreme approaches Harry takes to guiding Harry back to his calling, each acted out with the blank certainty of a mechanic tightening a screw. Yet they also lead Michel back to a path of creativity. Will he accept the price Harry is putting on self-actualisation?
Harry He’s Here to Help is definitely saleable as a psychological thriller, especially in France where the likes of Patricia Highsmith are wildly popular for bringing some meaty Freudian overtones to tales of murder. The film’s opening scenes play out very similarly to George Sluizer’s The Vanishing, promising a tale of random malevolence, carried off without Hollywood sadism but with some Gallic cheer (also making you wonder if there isn’t something inherently cursed about French service stations). Yet in terms of structure and outlook, Harry... is actually much closer to a psychological ghost story: a character who has disconnected from an essential truth in their past is haunted in the present and forced to reconcile with a fuller sense of themselves via a series of confusing and unsettling experiences that they don’t fully understand (and fear) until the denouement. There’s limited tension in this story and we’re never in any doubt about who is turning the screw.
Instead, this is a story of the bubbling up of sublimated feelings. Claire and Michel are mostly living their lives unconsciously as most young parents are, bumping from minor catastrophe to the next. One of the background tasks of the renovation has Michel moving wheelbarrow loads of soil to fill in a deep well for their children’s safety. ‘Hell of a job…’ avers Harry, ‘You should rent an excavator. It's less work.’ Michel, perhaps unable to admit the part of himself that rejects this on a financial basis replies, ‘I like the exercise.’ As the film progresses and the well takes on greater importance, we can see this filling in as a metaphor for the unconsciousness that life has brought Michel to, Sisisyphus by way of Grand Designs. We never find out what Michel’s job is: he is here now and those are problems stuffed to the back of the mental closet until the holiday is over. In fiction about unwanted guests, there is always a hidden question of why the incumbents don’t ask the interlopers to leave. In Parasite, it seems that affluence breeds its own kind of superiority, a failure of imagination that anyone beneath them in the social scale could bear them ill will or outwit them. In Harry… Michel and Claire’s acceptance of this oddball in their midst is because they simply have no strength to question it; their windows are wide open and the contagion can blow in unnoticed. In an early scene, Michel is surprised by a topless Harry, on his way for a midnight snack. ‘You should eat a raw egg yolk after each orgasm. Does wonders for virility,’ Harry coaches. Michel is bemused, but has no time to question it, as he must return to his sleepwalk of caring for his child’s fever. Like Dante’s wanderer, he is ‘Midway upon the journey of life’ finding himself ‘within a forest dark/ For the straightforward pathway had been lost’.
Harry returns him to consciousness, but many of the psychological impulses are played out in grand, brutal form; the Greek myths that give Freudian disorders their names made literal. The issues in Michel’s life operate at a place of deep ambivalence. He loves his wife, parents and children, but sometimes wishes for fewer arguments, less balancing and more time of his own. Harry captures the peak of one side of his feelings about these eternally complex subjects, brings them out of the subconscious and pushes them off a cliff. As Michel’s brother Eric – a malingering rockist wannabe who is nevertheless in touch with this shadow self – is driven away from his parents’ funeral, he confesses to Harry, ‘Back there, in the crematorium, seeing the coffins... I suddenly felt so good!’ As director Dominik Moll put it, ‘For some people the death of their parents can be a very liberating experience. Grown up at last!’ These are not resolved desires, just part of the complexity of feelings we have about life’s choices. Michel stands on the verge of implicating himself in Harry’s crimes, but pulls back from the edge. The film’s final scenes sees him driving along in his new 4x4, his wife asleep at his side, holding a copy of his new personal writing and his children dozing in the rear view. Michel does not desire the fantasies that Harry offers (of a less self-actualised partner, to be rid of the fuss of his parents), he merely needs the reminder to reorientate his path, to lay his hand upon the tiller, to decide which compromises and responsibilities are necessary.
Although structured as though Harry is a devil of Michel’s worse nature, Harry is definitively a living being with aspirations. To the film’s credit, it’s easy to engage with him, but impossible to understand him. Seeking for explanations based on genre leads us nowhere. There are more than enough scenes where Harry acts on his own volition (like bludgeoning Eric for mocking Michel’s poem) that assure us that Harry won’t be revealed to be a projection of Michel’s subconscious. Other characters immediately recognise Harry as a school compatriot of Michel, assuaging the suspicion that he is a Tom Ripley-esque con artist. It’s notable that Michel, cut off from his early promise and childlike self, is unable to recall Harry. Harry and Michel sit on either side of the divide of adulthood and responsibility. Harry has been able to maintain a childlike belief in the possibility of solutions, abetted by ready access to money he simply inherited. Played by Sergi López with a lot of charm and a good deal of comedy, it’s entrancing to see someone who has reframed life around their own view of what’s important.Murder troubles Harry not at all. Michel refusing to continue his story about flying monkeys leaves him screaming into the void. A lot of situation comedy is wrung from people behaving as we would if we were less hemmed in by society and Harry… has the same amusement, just playing its hand harder.
Many people will have felt the terrifying sound of excuses evaporating as we entered lockdown, the barriers to creative work in theory now nothing but green lights. For me, this period has felt at times unpleasantly like university summer holidays where the thought of more exciting, useful, self-actualising ways of passing the time would swim into view as the next level of Super Mario Sunshine loads. For me, as I’m working on new projects and contemplating old reasons for not working on them, a little reconciliation with some of the reasons we put off what’s important has gone a long way. Being in contact with the shadow self is healthy, and you don’t even need to murder a family member to do it.
Recommendations
With Michel Piccoli passing, now’s as good a time as any to watch Leos Carax’s very silly, very stylish, giddy as a gibbon Mauvais Sang (streaming in a lot of places). Some comparisons with Sexy Beast in the ‘heist movie as an excuse for high style’, but this one has Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche enjoying a ‘one night on Earth’ meet-cute.
I doubt this is going to convince anyone who isn’t already a fan of electronic music, but if you are, I would recommend Aphex Twin’s Analord series if you are seeking something deeply pleasurable to mask the noise of the sounds of your home during lockdown.
I’ve referenced Phantom Thread above, and that’s excuse enough for me to recommend another Lesley Manville crowning moment: her sitcom Mum is perfect at the moment when you might be looking for something dependable and substantial, but perhaps no longer than 30 minutes.