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Darkness prevails already at the very beginning of 'La Moustache', Emmanuel Carrère's proper adaptation of his novel of the same title, which he published back in the 1980's. Accompanying the opening credits is Philip Glass' perfectly composed and utterly gloomy Violin Concerto, which re-emerges throughout the movie and constantly supplies the global atmosphere of the film with an ominous and bewildering touch.

Welcome to this year's most abstruse film, and eventually the most challenging psychological experiment since 'The Machinist'. Presented at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in the 'Quinzaine des Réalisateurs' category - a category promoting abstract and rather unusual movies - 'La Moustache' follows the intricate story of Marc Thiriez (Vincent Lindon), an ordinary Parisian architect who slips into a vicious identity crisis after he spontaneously shaves off his moustache.

"How would you react if I shaved off my moustache?" Marc asks his girlfriend Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos) before they visit some friends for dinner. Her reaction is not immediate, and she simply replies "I don't know; I love you with it but I've never known you without it." So while Agnès leaves the apartment for a short time to do some shopping, Marc takes the risk and cuts off his beloved moustache, just like that, in order to see his lover's face and analyze her reaction when she returns home.

However, Marc will be severely disappointed: upon Agnès' arrival, she does not utter one single word. She seems not to notice the major physical change in Marc's face. Nor do their friends. Even Marc's colleagues at the office fail to perceive the absence of his moustache. Is he on the verge of madness? Or has he become the target of a massive conspiracy triggered by his own girlfriend? More weirdly, did he even ever have a moustache? Or was it part of some unexplainable imagination? Marc has no clue at all how to react to his baffling new situation…

When you enter the official movie website, a big question mark appears at the end of the flash intro. This question mark is totally appropriate, since it clearly illustrates what kind of movie 'La Moustache' really is: namely a confusing, puzzling drama with an open ending and a number of unexplainable twists, flashbacks and mysterious appearances by characters when you least expect it. "What is 'La Moustache' about?" is the first question of a recent online interview conducted with Emmanuel Carrère. The director himself has no answer to that crucial question.

Indeed, 'La Moustache' is one of these attention-grabbing cinematic mysteries that first baffle the spectators, and then leave them behind with a bunch of questions unanswered. There are though, in this ingeniously structured and passionately filmed movie, some easily detectable themes. For once, 'La Moustache' is an analysis of a dysfunctional couple tumbling into a conflict driven by mistrust. Marc soon accuses Agnès of plotting against him, but Agnès is deeply persuaded that Marc has in fact never had a moustache. This marks the beginning of a series of violent arguments and disputes.

Moreover, Carrère's film closely focuses on a man struggling with the inevitable loss of his personal identity. Marc is unable to distinguish between reality and imagination, and so he struggles hard to uncover the origins of the problem. He is a man all on his own against the rest of the world. In his apartment, he finds some old pictures from a vacation in Bali, all of them showing him with a moustache. But is he really the only one to see it? Is the moustache on this photo real or not? He does not know, and we do not either.

Especially the first part of 'La Moustache' is intensely compelling and dark, examining the relationship between Marc and Agnès, and closely focusing on Marc's progressive battle to keep his emotional and moral nature under control. When his consciousness slowly begins to shut down, the tension mounts as the suspense grows and the atmosphere becomes more and more threatening. Carrère has a brilliant vision, and he captures Marc's way into madness in a diverse and appealing way.

Marc is the perfect role for Vincent Lindon, whose look is continually as puzzling as the story itself. He masters his role with ideal perfection, always acting authentically. The same can be said about the brilliant Emmanuelle Devos ('La Femme de Gilles'), who delivers an enigmatic performance as Agnès. Her complex character is a true object of curiosity, and no one can trust her. Is she the evil woman ruining the mind of her partner? Or is she the reasonable person? Question marks à gogo.

The last twenty minutes of 'La Moustache', which follow Marc to Bangkok, where he repetitively embarks and disembarks ferries all day long, are quite debatable, yet very challenging. The film reaches yet another climax, takes another abrupt twist, and once again challenges us spectators by sparking our curiosity. Please do not expect a satisfying explanation towards the very ending, because 'La Moustache' ain't going to give you one. Many pieces of the puzzle remain untraceable; but that's exactly what makes this masterpiece so intriguing and unique. (Grade: B+)

Read the book some time ago and after watching the movie felt much the same sort of existential exhilaration - if there is such a thing. Maybe it was just the cold that I have, though. A little overacted at times, but otherwise like an exotic episode of the Twilight Zone, shot in glorious colour. The film reminded me another French film I saw in the theatre recently by the name of Cache, which I enjoyed very much. As for it's American counterpart, I suppose that you'd be looking at something like Lost Highway, David Lynch's bizarre account of a modern, urban couple trying to grapple with the unknown. This seems to be something of a genre for the French and they are quite good at pulling it off - as is evidenced with this film - with considerable style and enough depth of plot and character to leave you considering and reconsidering the film for far more than the sadly customary 10 minutes.

I almost shaved my beard off after watching it just to see what would happen. But I haven't yet. Or have I?

This is a strange story of mental illness (at least that's how I chose to interpret it). A man, Marc, gradually loses his grip on reality after shaving his mustache that was always there as part of his look as a man (or at least he thinks it was). The movie is seen through Marc's perspective which makes it difficult to discern reality from his bouts of schizophrenic hallucinations.

At some points the movie reminds me of Lost Highway in the manner with which it represented the split of the protagonist (or rather a metamorphosis) into two different characters. In La Moustache the split happens at the level of the "life" of the protagonist, his world is constantly subjected to transformations, while he more or less stays the same. However in LH we can discern the "true" part of the protagonist from his "imagined" part. That distinction is impossible in La Moustache ; we don't know where his madness starts and where it ends. He is a total mess, and it is upon this ambiguity that everything we see is built.

All in all, this movie was a really nice surprise that I highly enjoyed and that I recommend for fans of Lynch, Cronenberg and psychological thrillers/dramas.

Borrowing a few techniques from the likes of Lynch or Haneke, La Moustache presents an engaging but intentionally confusing story of one man's facial hair and the strange series of events that are set off once that hairy upper lip was removed. Acting as a catalyst in this bizarrely written mystery, The Moustache really plays better as psychological drama then the semi-ludicrous, detail-specific, identity riddle it's seductive direction and powerful performances wooed us into believing. Guided by typical cornerstones of praised European fare, this film, as stubborn or illogical as it may be, is punctuated by the restrained and observant direction of it's original novelist Emmanuel Carrère, and crowned by the masterfully human performance Vincent Lindon imbues this difficult character. When the final credits have rolled, many will be left scratching their heads, already forming diverging conclusions as to what this movie actually had to say. Though there seemed to be too much left to speculation with too many plot holes to justify everything I saw, this was still a compelling mistake at worst and is still worth taking the shave even if the final result feels more pretentiously derivative then compellingly original.

This movie is a prime example of how the simplest things can mushroom out of control. Architect Marc (Vincent Lindon) has had a moustache since he was knee high to a blueprint and it is, he feels, part of him, then he takes it into his head to speculate on just how much he is identified via the moustache. He starts by asking his live-in lover Agnes (Manu Devos) whether she would still fancy him sans moustache; since she's only known him with it she can't answer. So, out comes the razor and THEN comes the uneasiness that segues into genuine fright. Not only does Devos not notice the difference but neither do their friends and his colleagues at work. We are now on the fringes of a Kafkaesque scenario which isn't really resolved satisfactorily. For reasons that eluded me Marc, by now convinced that Devos has some hidden agenda he can't fathom, lights out for Hong Kong literally in just the clothes he stands up in and spends a few days - weeks, months? - riding the ferry before Devos shows up, or does she? For one thing how did she know where he was and/or track him down to the fleabag where's he's taken a room. Lots of food for thought here and the acting is out of the right bottle if anybody asks you.

"The Moustache" is a comedy that, starting from the most trivial of pretexts, quickly turns into a true Kafkian nightmare. A man shaves his mustache. No one seems to notice, and in a surrealistic parody of male mid-life crisis this causes conflict, pain and uncertainty. But more and more threads come undone in the fabric of his reality.

Excellent self-adaptation of a short novel by Emmanuel Carrère, La Moustache delivers the spectator with much more than it promises, in these days a rare occurrence indeed. Vincent Lindon as the troubled protagonist is good and measured, and the movie has an excellent pace and nothing is overdone. Even the theme, a Philip Glass "Concerto pour violon et orchestre" could not be more effective. Will we ever see this movie in the USA? Maybe in a parallel reality.

French author Emmanuel Carrère's sole venture into feature filmmaking by far, LA MOUSTACHE is adapted from his own novel published in 1986, a head-scratching story about a middle-aged French man Marc (Lindon), whose life starts to collapse after he shaved his trademark moustache on a whim, and everyone around starts to behave that they have never seen him in moustache, including his wife Agnès (Devos).

So, under this presumption, there could be two possible explanations: either Agnès is right, so Marc must have some serious psychological issues should be treated with kid gloves; or, Agnès is lying, when having dinner at their friends', Agnès is accused as an incorrigible liar by her ex- boyfriend Serge (Amalric), which might insinuate that an underhand conspiracy theory is in the pipeline. Cinematically, it is rather an intriguing premise, however, in hindsight, as the film turns out to be an experiment completely open to each individual's own interpretation, Carrère knowingly oscillates between these two scenarios lest the plot would veer to either direction with no turning back.

Take the example of the photo albums Marc finds, it is a trip to Bali years ago and obviously he is sporting a moustache in every picture, but, instead of pushing forward his proofs to Agnès or his friends, he chooses to withhold it until the album goes missing, if that's a slip of mind, later we clearly see his moustache in both the head-shots in his wallets and his passport, why not show them to contest his belief, or just visit his parents, who should know the truth, but no, because, it would channel the story into a dead-end, either Agnès is right or she is playing a bigger game to dupe him, either way, it would lose the mystical allure.

So, out of wits to keep the suspense rolling, Carrère employs a brisk geographical shift to Hong Kong, where Marc aimlessly and tediously moseys on ferry rides, an economical transportation in a metropolitan city (which might be used to save a fair amount of cost in shooting whilst the crew could enjoy their vacation), so as to buy some time to let his moustache grow back, then, bang! Surreal events materialise again, and viewers have no sooner recovered from the bamboozling revelation than the film reaches its succinct finish line, admittedly, it is an in-your-face anticlimax.

Masked as an existential fable, LA MOUSTACHE intrigues at first, but pretty soon loses its sway and resorts to absurd-ism and metaphysics, which could be an alternative to lift the bar, like Denis Villeneuve did in ENEMY (2013), but in this case, it only betrays the filmmaker's incompetence to concoct up anything could possibly give a plausible justification, a cheap cop-out always tastes bitter and gets under one's skin.

I saw the movie at the Melwood Screening room in Pittsburgh, PA so indeed the film made it the USA.

The movie held my interest throughout but in the end it was unsatisfying because it continued to create loose ends throughout without ever weaving them back together. You could argue that that was intentional, that the viewer was supposed to draw their own conclusions. But, given that real life so often presents unknowable people and events, a film is an opportunity to see things through. mho.

A few things I wondered about: At the end of the movie, his wife mysteriously appears in his south Asian hotel and acts as if nothing is strange about that. As if they had been there together the while time. They make love and then he wakes. It's not clear if she was still there and he's alone. But, just prior to bed, she had suggested he shave his mustache and he does. And she acknowledges him shaving it. That acknowledgment seemed satisfying to him.

Some people, mostly strangers seemed to recognize from photos that he had had a mustache. But all the closest friends denied him ever having had one. Seems too much to believe that he had had one and so he seems crazy. But, they might be in collusion. The film doesn't providing any motif for that collusion.

The premise for "La Moustache" should be enough to grab the attention of any film fanatic, especially one who gets thrills from the psychological twists perpetrated upon an audience by the likes of Hitchcock and those he inspired. The film begins simply enough with a man in the bath, inquiring of his wife whether or not he should shave off his mustache. Soon enough he's rid himself of that same lip hair, and no one seems to notice. In fact, maybe he never even had the thing in the first place. How genius a premise, right? The minutiae of daily life are oft overlooked subject matter, so it's refreshing to see something so basic given major importance. Things go along smoothly enough as the man starts to come unwound due to this, but then what? By the time the end credits roll, certain thoughts are running wildly through the mind of the audience. It goes back to wondering just how much can be perpetrated upon an audience before they are either too stumped to get it, or too mentally manipulated to care. This is an interesting film worth a peek, and possibly a discussion about its genius or likewise about where it goes sadly astray.

Everyone who writes so befuddled, about what a time-waster this film is, claims it was two hours they can't get back. For me, it felt like an hour. Objectively, it was an hour-&-a-half. Initial impressions... On the plus side : (1) Patrick Blossier's gorgeous photography, (2)Lindon & Devos's perfect embodiment of the Ordinary Couple, and, (3) a chance to see an author adapt his own novel in complete control. Downsides: (1) Philip Glass's standard, distractingly portentous score, (2) a protracted denouement that reeks of mystification-for-mystification's-sake, and.. -- as an aside -maybe this is my own fault- *for all the tea in France I couldn't recognize the novel I had read 8 year ago, in it's new cinematic form.*

Better to step on a live lizard than eat a dead snail, as my mother never said. If this review has helped anyone, I demand an explanation.

There's just something about Vincent Lindon, a mix of charm, vulnerability and male charisma that makes his screen-presence undeniable... and effortless. Is it his droopy and sad big eyes with that expression of childish bewilderment, is it that sensual crop of brownish hair making him look younger... Lindon is the perfect candidate for characters of a few words because he's good at acting, even more at reacting. And so "La Moustache" is the perfect canvas for his talent.

Lindon is Marc, a man whose life took a strange turn after he shaved his moustache. Such a preposterous premise can be ruined by overacting and director Emmanuel Carrere (who wrote the original book) had done half the job by casting Lindon. Is his performance good enough to carry the film? My bet is that viewers will either be disappointed by the ending and look at it as a copout or will enjoy the psychological nightmare and its existential implications. Lindon's performance will either be a consolation or a consolidation.

What they won't find though is answers: "La Moustache" is one of these mystery thrillers that aren't designed to 'get you', but that are rather concerned by the atmosphere, the emotions and the way reality can gaslight a man, bringing him to sheer insanity.

Back to the film. Marc is a designer, we first see him taking a bath and chatting with his wife Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos). How would it look if he shaved his moustache? She says she never knew him without one. We know that's crucial exposition. She goes outside for a little while, he decides to cut the whole thing. When she gets back, we see Marc trying to hide his face for as long as he can, to prepare her for a big reveal... that she doesn't notice. He's surprised but doesn't blink. On the car, you can see in his face that he's distracted by that anticlimactic reaction (or non-reaction for that matter) and probably thinks what we would think in his place. What kind of joke is that?

They visit a couple friends, she goes first while he's looking for a parking spot, when he gets to their house, they don't notice either. At that point, Marc doesn't feel like having fun, there's a long story told by Serge delivered by the laconic tone of Mathieu Almaric and I suspect his rhythm was deliberately slowed down to accentuate Marc's boredom. He's obviously not interested and neither are we. All Marc wants is to know why the hell no one notices that he's shaven his moustache. He confronts Agnes in the car and the verdict falls in form of an argument: he's never had a moustache.

And so the plot thickens.

There's no need going further because this is basically the premise of the film: a big global conspiracy without any rationale behind. Even his colleagues fail to notice the big change, prompting him to start smoking again. The film is like a sort of Hitchcockian paranoid thriller à la "Wrong Man" or "The Lady Vanishes" when the heroine was told there was no old lady with her. Only the nightmare is reinforced by the absence of motives. Why would Agnes lie? Or the others?

The story slides towards the supernatural when many aspects of his life he took for granted slowly generates into nothingness, like these dreams with fictional truths or facts. Marc's life becomes a nightmare whose psychological tempo is driven by piano music, orchestrated by Carrere.

The film puzzled me, I was first intrigued by its choice to open directly with the shaving, I figured it would take ten or fifteen minutes to expose the characters, ... but since we saw him with a moustache, there's no reason to doubt he had one. And the real strength of the film is that everyone plays it totally straight, there's no villain, Agnes is totally natural and seems as confused as he is. One shortcoming is the use of ellipse at convenient moments, the car argument is cut abruptly and we never see Marc's reaction. Also the bit about the photo album is never fully explored. Did she see that he's got facial hair or not?

My wife told me that there had to be some symbolism with the facial hair, each clip of hair was a memory, or maybe it was because he didn't ask her first... she could be right even if she wasn't, I don't think it matters: such films could be easily be entrapped in their own premise and be a sort of mental claustrophobia but the third act takes us to Hong Kong, of all the places. Why? Why not? When you become estranged to your own life, better be a stranger and an anonymous, period. Marc tries to create patterns, goes to one place to another, takes the same ferry boat, mixes with the crowd, tries to earn some looks and smiles and things go that way, I didn't see where it was heading at, my patience was getting to an end and at that moment, Agnes comes back, her presence validating one of my wife's theories and there's an interesting bit with the moustache that doesn't provide a definite answer but tie the plot together and give the sense of closure that made me wish for the film to end at that moment. And it did.

Is there a definite answer? I don't know. But I know Lindon's paranoia and growing madness work so well that I could really get in his shoes, even the soaked ones. Now, why the story of a man shaving moustache and no one noticing? There could be many interpretations, I like the idea that it might be a metaphor for these initiatives we take in order to vainly earn ourselves the approval of people around us. Maybe Marc overestimated his importance and needed a humbling experience... who knows?

LA MOUSTACHE forces the viewer to grapple with a conundrum; "What is real, and what is not?". Carrere (who wrote the novel and directed the film) is a writer and fan of the late, great science fiction author, Philip K. Dick. In fact, Carrere's, I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE DEAD:A JOURNEY INTO THE LIFE OF PHILIP K. DICK is an excellent biography of this gifted author. Nearly all of Dick's work concerned the shifting nature of Identity and the ontological basis for Reality. This movie examines the possibility of "Change"-shaving a moustache, and the impact on a life. In a sense, the film is kind of a Black Comedy, in that such a minor adjustment would not seem to lead to such dislocation. But, that is not the case in La Moustache. The movie begs all kinds of bizarre interpretations, so don't expect an easy ride from this French 'Chinese Puzzle' of a film,

LA MOUSTACHE is a very well acted and conceived Belgian film that starts with a terrific premise that could be the opening for either a comedy or a drama and ends up wondering which path to take. Writer/director Emmanuel Carrère (with co-script writer Jérôme Beaujour) takes us on a mind trip that becomes increasingly disorienting and frustrating as the film progresses. It challenges the audience to think but then there is no payoff for the effort.

Marc (Vincent Lindon) is a handsome middle aged man married to Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos) for fifteen years and one morning, in what in retrospect is in response to a bit of relationship ennui, decides to shave off his mustache which has always been present since his marriage began. The surprise to Marc is that Agnès doesn't even notice. At work Marc quietly shows up and no one notices, not even his close associate Bruno (Hippolyte Girardot). Marc is at first perplexed, then he confronts his wife and fellow workers with the fact that he just shaved off his mustache and no one believes that he ever had one! Marc begins to search for photos showing his previous face and gradually the photos disappear and his wife denies ever seeing them, ever traveling to Bali where the photos were taken, etc. People begin to wonder about Marc's sanity and his wife suggests he seek psychiatric care. It is at this point that Marc enters a fugue state and ultimately disappears to Hong Kong on a never ending quest for discovering the truth about who he really is, whether he actually exists, whether he is the pawn in a cosmic game....it just gets more ludicrous.

Both Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos are superb in this peculiar roles and the film has solid production values. Perhaps it is the director's point to leave the audience in a confused state, one that calls forth the existential questions, but as a film it merely peters out, leaving the viewer a bit frustrated by the lack of substance. Grady Harp

At first, through the first third of the movie, I was sure that the film was an allegory about the architect's family and friends never actually noticing him (or his moustache). Things got confusing to me when he didn't press his wife about the Bali photographs (which appear to confirm he's NOT crazy), his wife is apparently trying to have him committed and he suddenly escapes to Hong Kong.

Though I did enjoy the film immensely in all its detail, I kept feeling there must have been a link between his moustache (and the identity crisis shaving it off led to) and his father's death. His father's death seemed to have discombobulated him.

Did his own confusion about his moustache symbolize his inability to digest the death of his father? Was he dreaming all of the confusion about his moustache?

In the end, I'm left with questions only. Nonetheless, I did enjoy this film and would like to know what other people think of it and what they make of it.

Marc is sitting in his bath one morning (yes, a grown man taking a bath in a little tub) and asks his wife, "how would you feel if I shaved off my mustache?" She doesn't think it's a great idea, for the 15 years they've been married, she's never known him without his 'stache. He shaves it off anyway, but when he sees his wife, she doesn't notice, neither do their friends at dinner that night, neither do his co-workers. Marc finally flips out, shouts at everyone, tells them he's tired of their little joke, and what do they really think. His wife and co-workers are appalled, what is he talking about, he's never had a mustache. In fact, he's imagining other things as well, or is he? This off-beat drama/thriller about a man questioning his own sanity remains fascinating throughout. Is it an elaborate plot, has he gone insane, is it just a dream? Throughout, I was intently searching for clues and trying to help the hapless man make sense of his out-of-kilter world. Emmanuelle Devos as Agnès, Marc's wife continues to astound me with her expressiveness. (See La Femme de Gilles to see her at her emoting best.) This movie is like a hunk of baguette with creamy butter. The lightness and commonness of the bread are enlivened by the rich, smooth butter. The two sides play together well, creating food synergy. The crisp crust, the fluffy interior, and the almost sweet butter with a bit of salt to enhance the flavor is difficult to resist and can become the most enticing part of a meal. 7/10

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One day a middle-aged architect of Paris suddenly cuts off his mustache, but his surrounding claim he has never had one. Somebody is wrong, and since nobody shares his opinion, he has to escape to Hongkong from the forced mental treatment. Here, in the meantime, he cuts again his regrown mustache, and because this time the change was recognized by his wife, they, again, find each other. What is this film all about? Perhaps about the importance of the everyday matters of no significance, which can still, somehow, ruin our life. About whether we really know each other, listen to each other or even our closest relationships are superficial? Or are we a witness of a disintegration of an instable personality? There is a short-story with the same title „Moustache" written by the French novelist, Maupassant in 1883, which can elucidate a different way of interpretation. The story is a real ode to the mustache by a fictitious lady. But one can read about other interesting things in that letter „ And mainly I adore mustache because it is French, pure-blooded French wear. We inherited it from our Gallic ancestors, and deserve it, like the symbol of our national character." From this point, the saucy mustache of our hero becomes the last symbol of a national identity. He and his wife live a life of a typical citizen of a Western world in the multicultural Paris. They prefer sushi to French food, travel Bali for holiday, and buy Chinese dresses and trinkets in Hongkong. His close surrounding, his wife and his friends, do not even notice the change caused by the disappearance of his mustache, but from an objective point of view (policewoman) the difference is obvious. The past is coming to an end, which is presented by the death of his father, and the vain search of the house of his childhood. This necessarily leads to the development of a split personality: is it himself who is insane or the others? Is he a victim of a conspiracy, or is he suffer from persecution mania? The never-ending ferry-boat journey between two coasts representing a loss of his footing, and the spin of the drum of a washing machine in his dream (head) becomes a symbol of a brainwash. This film is a story about a man who has lost his national identity, and if there is a chance to get it back. There is no answer but perhaps he has to travel to the other part of the world to make even his wife understand; yes there is something what we have lost, but it is good as it is. Still, the last picture is quite worrying: a man without a mustache is lying in a dark sleeplessness, like in a grave.

The basic story idea for LA MOUSTACHE is unique and intrigued me. A seemingly insignificant action occurs and then a man's entire existence changes! This occurs when the lead, on a whim, shaves off his mustache. Oddly, his wife didn't notice nor did his friends. At first, it's no big deal, but later the man becomes angry--how could they be so self-absorbed that they didn't notice or care?! Oddly, when confronted, they have no recollection that he had one, even though the audience saw he had one and saw pictures of the man with the mustache! This part of the film was interesting and pulled me in very well.

However, out of the blue, the man disappears to Hong Kong and from then on the plot really makes no sense at all. At first, I thought I'd missed something when the film ended--there were just too many dangling plot points and things that just confused me. So, I watched the "making of featurette" on the DVD and one of the main characters confided that she read the script and she was also confused and it made no sense. Some people might like this and normally I don't mind a film that leaves unanswered questions, but this goes way beyond this to just confusing and...well, stupid. It took a film that might have earned a 7 or 8 and made it, at best, a 4.

Decent acting but a bad script sink this film. But, like so many sub-par films, the DVD case made it sound amazing and worthwhile with phrases like "A paranoid thriller in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock" or "...a mini-masterwork". Yeah, right. The film had little to do with Hitchcock's style and comparisons to Hitchcock are a dime a dozen. Many of Chabrol's films (even his bad ones) are also often compared to Hitchcock's and I'm getting sick of this disingenuous advertising. One of the very few films that might really deserve this comparison is the original LES DIABOLIQUES. In contrast, LA MOUSTACHE seemed about as "Hitchcockian" as MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III!