Man Is a Woman

The title is a reference to the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies' somewhat queer contention that every marriage involves a communion of four people - the man, the woman, plus the man in the woman and the woman in the man. Like, get outta here! Simon Eskenazy (de Caunes, unfamiliarly sober and bearded), an occasional clarinettist, might be a reasonably content gay man, but after his uncle offers him a grand inheritance to marry and propagate the family name, encouraged by his anxious mother, he decides to try his arm at a relationship with Rosalie (Zylberstein, ever reliable). She's an orthodox Jewish Klezmer singer, and saving herself for wedlock, but the way she takes a shine to his clarinet suggests this could yet make a marriage of inconvenience. The film's actually more concerned with the shifting sands of Simon's head and heart than with the physicalities of sexual incompatibility, which would be all very well if it weren't so muffed and muted. Director Zilbermann takes a relaxed, open approach to the material's possibilities, but no one manages to unearth any insights of note, and the result's pretty much a void.