Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile (I'm Not An Easy Man)

When talking feminism, one can expect several reactions from its detractors (which you can guess, are mainly men), from the ones that believe that "feminazis" are angry women that want to kill men, to those who don't believe in feminism, but in "egalitarianism". Even when a lot of battles have been won, can we say that we have achieved an equal society where feminism isn't needed anymore?

Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile is, at first glance, a hilarious comedy that gives a fresh turn in the "switched bodies" canon, but it is at the same time a harsh criticism on patriarchal society and how it operates at different levels to oppress women in every single aspects of their lives, and the lies they tell themselves to don't see such oppression. Demian, a stereotypical "bro" with a reputation of playboy, after an accident, finds himself in a world were women dominate every public sphere and men are relegated to domestic chores and/or are heavily objectified.

It is one of those rare films with an average beginning (typical rom-com establishment of characters and situations) but that, as the film evolves, it gets smarter and smarter and you realize that the dull setting was almost inevitable to get where the film aimed. We might be tempted to see it (specially us, guys) as a revenge film, and even to dismiss the ridicule situations presented there (aggressive women and delicate men), but the clever part of the film is confronting us with that ridicule to question ourselves: why is it ridicule, almost unbelievable, when women behave that way but normally accepted when guys do it? A powerful scene shows the godson of the main character confessing that the girl she likes forced him to give her oral sex. The main character laughs at him, we might do as well, but then they make us realize how sick are our gender constructions to encourage that sort of behavior on a constant basis.

This is what comedy should be used for, as a way to denounce and satirize the wrongs of our society. The difference between Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile and bad comedies like The 40 Year Old Virgin or The Hangover is that, instead of provoking cheap laughs with usual stereotypes, here those are subverted and force us to question our ideologies and our behaviors, the laughs we get are as cathartic as they are thought-provoking.

Yes, it still has some defects, and yes it would have benefited by a more developed sense of style, but the care on the detail to make fun of silly gender constructions (the guy gets his hair-chest trimmed in the same way that female porn stars trim their pubic hair) give them points for wits, it is clear that it was a film written and directed by women, no man could have been able to get those details, just because of the privilege status that makes us see as anecdotic rather than a real gender issue. Their final knock-out comes when instead of the ending that would have been expected, they offer us something much more powerful, the last sequence makes evident to anybody why is it that the feminist movement is as necessary as it has been since the first suffragists bravely took the streets to demand equal rights. If this is a film that every feminist person will enjoy, it is, above all, a film that every non-feminist person should see.