After watching The Model Couple, I have come to the conclusion that its director, William Klein, may have been more suited for directing short films instead of full length pictures. I say this after having previously watched another one of his films, Mr. Freedom. What I've noticed is that his films, while wildly innovative and stunning to look at, have a tendency to collapse under their own weight. In Mr. Freedom, the film's satire was undercut by long, drawn-out sections where costumed characters would scream political discourse at each other. And in The Model Couple, a truly fascinating concept for a film is lost amidst tiresome execution which inevitably leads to the plot fraying like a tortured piece of string. It has been only a day or two since I saw the film, and yet I have to check online to remind myself how it ended. That is how little of an impact the last third of the film has. But what of the first two-thirds? Well, allow me to quote the blurb provided by the Criterion Collection for its Eclipse Series release of the film: "In 1977 France, the Ministry of the Future chooses two “normal,” white, middle-class citizens, Claudine (Anémone) and Jean-Michel (André Dussolier), for a national experiment. They will be monitored and displayed on television for six months in a model apartment outfitted with state-of-the-art products and nonstop surveillance—the template for 'a new city for the new man.'" Most of the film follows the two getting poked and prodded by sadist German scientists and having to come to terms with lives dominated by rampant commercialism. But then, for the last third, the film loses its way and depicts the couple becoming prisoners of pint-sized revolutionaries. I don't know. If Klein had disciplined himself towards creating a more cohesive story, The Model Couple could have been a truly great film. Instead, the audience gets mere glances at a film that could have been so much more.
6/10
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