Neither a Silicon Valley start-up nor a billion-dollar technology company was responsible for changing the sex lives of millions of women around 2015. The Bavarian couple Brigitte and Michael Lenke were behind the globally successful “Womanizer”. He, an engineer and passionate inventor, was looking for a technical solution to an extremely private problem his wife was having. From countless experiments, a device was finally created that used gentle air pressure pulses to take a completely new approach and was able to help women reach climax in a very short time.
The French actress, screenwriter and director Reem Kherici (“Paris at Any Price”) took this unusual story as a starting point for her comedy “Chéri, I’m Coming – The Invention of Lust”, moved it to France and transformed it into a love letter to ingenuity, mutual trust and the healing power of honest conversations. The real sophistication, however, lies in the fact that it doesn’t give the impression that it’s primarily about a sex toy. The film with the – once again – somewhat lurid German title is actually a relationship comedy, because it tells about the revival of a marriage and about what often remains unsaid: about sex life.
Fanny (Alexandra Lamy) is happy in her marriage – but in 20 years she has never had an orgasm!
Fanny (Alexandra Lamy) lives in a happy marriage. She loves her husband Tom (François Cluzet), a once successful engineer and inventor. Only a therapist (Reem Kherici herself) brings to light what Fanny has been keeping secret from her husband for more than twenty years: she has never experienced an orgasm. What in many comedies could lead to the start of a chain of misunderstandings and embarrassments, here develops with surprising sensitivity into a story about closeness, listening and starting anew together – because Tom actually makes Fanny’s problem his own, and he tries to solve it with the means at his disposal. In short: He tinkers – she tests.
Sometimes predictable, sometimes pure slapstick
The complications involved are occasionally moving and even disturbing in their humor. One of the most beautiful and important gags, which focuses on an aquarium including two unfortunate little fish, is even based on the memories of the Lenke couple. Of course, there are also some predictable punch lines, including Fanny’s ambition to meticulously follow her therapist’s instructions.
It can happen that the whole family listens to the erotic stories with which Fanny starts her regular masturbation appointments. But when Tom drives his Fanny around a cobblestoned small town market square in a jeep so that the vibrations trigger an orgasm in her, it’s not only funny, it turns into slapstick fireworks.
Alexandra Lamy and François Cluzet simply harmonize perfectly on screen.
The fact that the quite elegant, quite funny and anything but vulgar comedy about the search for and finding the female climax can be viewed as largely successful is largely thanks to Alexandra Lamy and François Cluzet. The two stars don’t play their characters as transfers or caricatures, but as people. They take Fanny and Tom seriously: as two personalities with rough edges who still love each other after more than 20 years, but suddenly have to realize that familiarity is not the same as openness.
This realization not only creates a new intimacy, but also a kind of team spirit that binds Fanny and Tom even more together. The comedy arises primarily from the characters, or more precisely: from Tom’s unwavering drive to invent and from Fanny’s ambitious attempts to follow her therapist’s advice.
Lamy and Cluzet are a perfect couple
The amazing thing is how well Alexandra Lamy and François Cluzet harmonize in their first film appearance together: he, who has probably already gone down in eternal screen memory with his appearance as a paralyzed millionaire in “Pretty Best Friends” and can still grin just as mischievously as before – and she, who can not only keep up with the cleverer comedian with her quick wit and casual elegance Cluzet, but even sets the tone. It’s not just the chemistry that’s right between the two – everything is right here: the timing, the humor, the looks and the little gestures. It’s a real joy to watch the two stars, who are obviously having fun.
Even if not every supporting character is 100% successful and given the presence they deserve, the film as a whole is successful. In particular, Mitty Hazanavicius, an obviously highly talented young actress who plays Fanny and Tom’s daughter Elsa, unfortunately gets short shrift. The subplot about the sale of her parents’ house, which Elsa is supposed to manage, at least brings a few additional laughs, but is otherwise completely unnecessary. But even if the script is weak, the consistently light and friendly atmosphere saves the moment, the scene – and thus the entire film.
Conclusion: The elegant comedy is entertaining, a bit frivolous, but by no means vulgar or pornographic. It celebrates neither sexual self-optimization nor the promise of technical miracles, but perhaps the most beautiful insight of a long relationship: that even after decades, something good can still come from – from an honest conversation or from a crazy idea.