‘I Am Not An Easy Man’

Imagine the world was a matriarchy.

Women ruled the planetary roost. Men walked around in clothing to satisfy the female gaze, they submitted to the whims of women in closed door work meetings and were sexually harassed in the street. In ‘I am Not an Easy Man’ (2018), we enter this world via a knock to a chauvinist’s head.

Waking up, the world has turned upside down and men are the primary child carers, avenues are named for famous women and he learns just what it is to have to navigate the world as a woman. Sometimes incisive and telling of a society absurdly skewed against women, this French comedy (English subtitles) is one in which men rally as ‘masculists’ to fight the status quo.

Directed by Eleonore Pourriat based on her 2014 short film ‘Oppressed Majority’ and starring Marie-Sophie Ferdane and Vincent Elbaz, the Netflix film is your typical gender reversal fare made watchable by compelling leads.

Missing a few opportunities and basic in simply making women like men instead of actually imagining a world ruled by women like women, ‘I am Not an Easy Man’ is still worth a watch.

Drawing attention to the way society undermines, gaslights and degrades woman through the absurdity of treating men the same way, the film is sobering and even wry in scenes where Damien (the man in a woman’s world) is told his biological clock is ticking and to spare his love interest his ‘masculist babble’.

Though the film does feel a little erratic in terms of tone – comedic, dramatic and even a little dystopian – its intentions are good and worth watching as an entry into an ongoing global conversation.

See this with a friend of the opposite sex and get talking. It’s real, timely and time’s up.