Jean-Michel and Claudine enroll in a social experiment as the « model couple », a 24/7 live show where scientists probe them and examine them. The couple themselves try to play along despite increasingly surreal demands and tests, and the analysts surrounding them quickly give in to pure sadism. Madness ensues.
Ages before reality shows became a thing, The Model Couple saves its real venom for notion that there might even be such a thing as a standard couple or even person, and our pathetic attempts to design every aspect of human existence. At every attempt to be themselves, Claudine and Jean-Michel get slapped down, and every inkling of rebellion is manipulated into yet another weird test. Director William Klein doesn't go as far out as on his other film Mister Freedom, keeping the absurdity mostly just within the bounds of realism, and the film works all the better for it.
Fictional depictions of the future come and go, and because The Model Couple focuses on a timeless topic of adapting societies to the people in them and the other way around, it remains very relevant and effective in spite of its age and the quaint technology on display.
We need more films like this.
Ages before reality shows became a thing, The Model Couple saves its real venom for notion that there might even be such a thing as a standard couple or even person, and our pathetic attempts to design every aspect of human existence. At every attempt to be themselves, Claudine and Jean-Michel get slapped down, and every inkling of rebellion is manipulated into yet another weird test. Director William Klein doesn't go as far out as on his other film Mister Freedom, keeping the absurdity mostly just within the bounds of realism, and the film works all the better for it.
Fictional depictions of the future come and go, and because The Model Couple focuses on a timeless topic of adapting societies to the people in them and the other way around, it remains very relevant and effective in spite of its age and the quaint technology on display.
We need more films like this.