It’s Raining Men (Iris et les Hommes 2024)

⭐⭐

For those who don’t know, Reviewer 2 is an academic term used to describe that person who during Peer Review of your journal article is unhappy that you haven’t written the article that they would have done. (I mention it in my review of Nightbitch).

And I wonder if my dissatisfaction with It’s Raining Men (2024) comes from my sense that this was not the film I would have written, or whether it is genuinely a bad film.

Let’s start from the beginning. I was excited that I was going to see a film about the female experience of a mid-life crisis. This excitement came from a sense that this is still a relatively little-discussed notion. Settle in for a quick lesson on one aspect of developmental psychology – Erik Erikson’s stages of psycho-social development.

Erikson was an American psychoanalyst who coined the phrase ‘identity crisis’. A very simplified version of his contribution to developmental psychology is that he conceptualised the life course as a series of struggles. The struggle of mid-life, he argued, was defined as that of generativity versus stagnation. These are fancy words that mean during midlife people find themselves wondering about the contribution they have made to the world and feel a push and pull sensation between feeling valued for their contribution (in a career, raising the next generation, etc.) or feeling unproductive and isolated with no clear understanding of their position in the world.

While a midlife crisis can affect men and women, Erikson’s work and the work of many developmental psychologists is often critiqued for the homogenising of diverse experiences, using the white, professional, straight man as a template. The midlife crisis in popular culture has come to mean a guy having an affair with his secretary and buying a fancy sports car. The female experience is rarely afforded much time on the big screen, because the ageing female is not considered good box office. (Check out the Geena Davis institute report on gender and age equality on screen).

So, yes when I saw a film advertised that was about a stagnating relationship told from a woman’s point of view I wanted to see it. And the fact it was French as well, how fancy!

It’s Raining Men is concerned with the choices facing Iris (played beguilingly by Laure Calamy). Iris leads an enviable life – a decent career, a good-looking successful husband, two interesting, academically gifted daughters, a lovely apartment in central Paris. But as she tells her osteopath the intimate relationship with her husband is dead.

A stranger suggests she takes a lover and recommends a dating app that might help.

I think I wanted something meaningful and funny and dark about the world of intimacy, dating and being an older woman. Dating apps didn’t exist when I was younger. I have never registered on one and only know how they work because they appear to be ubiquitous in the popular culture. As a stand-up, I’ve heard lots of the younger acts talk about the horrors of dating culture. The women feel exposed and quickly judged. The men feel pressured to perform in certain ways (and maybe a little entitled to a sexual outcome). It is an unbalanced, tilted world that promises far more than it can deliver It is scary and absurd. But for Iris it was a cavalcade of men, who were, in the main willing to follow her lead. It was an uncomplicated route back to her husband through a rediscovery of her sexuality. It was light and fluffy.

Laura Calamy held together what was a rather shoddy, dishonest piece of writing. She was quirky, brave, interesting to watch on screen. The musical number, which came from nowhere, was the highlight of the film. But boy, this was a film without any substance. And it was deeply dishonest about how intimate encounters with strangers may be mind-blowing, but are often unsafe, unsatisfactory and unsanitary. (Even the young man, living on his own had a clean apartment with crisp, white sheets). There was only one encounter that held any threat, but the threat was that Iris might be late to see her daughter in a school performance. Not a real threat of violence from a bitter man who had stalked her to her workplace.

So, as Reviewer 2, I wanted something darker and funnier. Good comedy is about timing and relatability (which the actress could do, but the writing less so). Great comedy is about the truth.

Giving out stars – it would only get two out of five and that’s because I did enjoy the musical number.

Now maybe I should write the story I wanted to see.

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