A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN (1973)
aka L’Evenement le plus important depuis que l’homme a marche sur la lune
Article 2604 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-22-2008
Posting Date: 9-29-2008
Directed by Jacques Demy
Featuring Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastrioianni, Micheline Presle
Country: France/Italy

A male instructor at a driving school discovers that he is pregnant.

I have to admit that I find the idea of a pregnant man only mildly amusing at best, though I suspect that women may like the concept more. As a result, I’m not really surprised that I found this movie mildly amusing at best, dull, predictable and obvious at worst. It’s really hard to gauge the performances; the dubbing is fairly weak throughout, though Marcello Mastrioianni seems to be doing the best he can. There are hints of a much better movie here; one conversation in a beauty parlor brought up the subject of how the world would change if men were able to get pregnant, and a movie that pursued that subject might actually have been interesting. The movie even threatens to move into that direction at one point, but it remains no more than a unfulfilled promise. The most amusing sequence to my eyes involved the pregnant man’s association with a clothing manufacturer who starts putting out a line of men’s maternity (or is it paternity) wear. The ending, however, is a major cop-out, and, more than anything else here, makes this one largely a waste of time. In short, the movie doesn’t deliver.