Review of the film “Rain of Men” by Caroline Vignal

The comedy “Rain of Men” (Iris et les hommes) by Caroline Vignal has been released, in which a happily married heroine in her early forties discovers the joys of online dating. Once again I envied the French ease in relationships Julia Shagelman.

During a manual therapy session, an attractive osteopath (Antoine Abinal) kneads, bends and twists a client (Lore Kalami) in different directions, while maintaining a polite conversation: how is work, how is the husband, how are the children? The woman answers in monosyllables and in general clearly does not feel very comfortable in her underwear in the company of an unfamiliar man. The reason for her stiffness and general tightness, which, apparently, was why she had to turn to a chiropractor, becomes clear right away: when asked how things are going with her husband, she answers “no way.”

This is the only problem in the prosperous life of the heroine, whose name is Iris. She has her own dental office with a constant flow of clients, a spacious apartment, two wonderful daughters (Daphne Crepier and Zoë Richard), and her husband Stefan (Vincent Elbaz) fully shares the concerns of raising them and other household chores. But there has been no intimate relationship between the spouses for a long time, about which she complains not only to the osteopath, but also to her friend (Miriam Akeddiu), whom she meets at school at a parent-teacher meeting. The third parent accidentally overhears their conversation and offers a solution: to improve her health, self-esteem and return to the joy of life, Iris urgently needs to find a lover. It’s even strange that, being the heroine of a French film, she didn’t think of this herself.

It turns out that since Iris met Stefan as a student and married him, technology has greatly simplified the dating process: now there are apps for everything, even for married women looking not for a divorce, but for fun. Iris installs one of them on her phone and is immediately bombarded with offers from men. The date with the first applicant under the pseudonym Alphonse (Sylvain Catan) goes rather awkwardly and ends with the heroine running away, but she receives the main thing from him: confidence in her own attractiveness and desirability. The second “match,” polyamorous Sylvain (Laurent Poitrenot), strengthens this feeling in her, and most importantly, infects Iris with his philosophy: we must enjoy life and take everything from it, because there will be no other chance.

“Rain of Men” is the second collaboration between Caroline Vignal and Laure Calamy after the film “The Donkey, the Lover and I” (2020), for which the actress received a Cesar Award. There she also played a woman who had to find herself through abandoning imposed attitudes and understanding her own desires. And for this, she, who was in a relationship with a married man, had to realize the futility of this relationship and get out of it. In the new film, the heroine Kalami, ironically, cheats on her spouse, but it turns out that properly organized adultery can only benefit a marriage.

The world of online dating in the film is shown as completely harmless and comfortable – nothing dangerous or unpleasant ever happens to Iris, and she is not embarrassed by sporadic dick picks. The meeting with Alphonse seems to promise a series of funny and absurd situations, but all the following men are attentive, gallant and, judging by the dreamily happy expression with which Iris leaves them, good in bed. After one of their dates, she even breaks out into the song “It’s Raining Men,” which gave the film its Russian theatrical title, right in the middle of the street. And only this unexpected insert number, in the tradition of classic musicals, disrupts the smooth flow of the film.

A hint of conflict appears in the last third of the film, when Iris’s adventures begin to interfere with her professional and family life. Her assistant (Suzanne De Becque) has to juggle patient transfers, her husband suddenly notices his wife’s late arrivals, and she has an ideological argument with her eldest daughter about what is more important to say: “no” or “yes.” Here the authors seem to want to throw a curveball at modern culture, which is concerned about issues of consent and personal boundaries, and to reproach today’s youth for being excessively puritanical. But it is her daughter’s example that helps Iris say “no” in time in the only situation where something could threaten her. The remaining difficulties that arose were also resolved to everyone’s satisfaction in every sense of the word. And the conclusion that the creators of the film come to is quite in the spirit of traditional family values: apps are good, but home is better.