I Am Not an Easy Man: An Alternate Reality
Today, we’re going to talk about a movie that came out over a year ago. French cinema, which has always shed light on social issues, now brings us this Éléonore Pourriat film. I Am Not an Easy Man is a romantic comedy where gender roles are reversed. It’s full of easily recognizable clichés and normalized stereotypes.
This film, which you can see on Netflix, shows a world in which women are the leaders in all fields and are the “heads of households” and men suffer from sexual violence, harassment, and all kinds of discrimination.
It’s an alternate reality where femininity is still considered fairly inferior, but where men are feminine. You’ll realize it’s an absolutely ridiculous world, but its mirror image, our reality, isn’t much different from it.
I Am Not an Easy Man: The plot
Damien is the main character of this film. He’s a sexist man with very strong patriarchal convictions. H e sees women as sexual objects and nothing more than that. Also, he’s built himself an amazing professional career in marketing by frequently using all the sexist clichés he can come up with. And he feels good in his own skin with the sexist privileges he enjoys.
But after hitting himself on the head, Damien wakes up in a world he can’t recognize. It looks like his same old life, but it’s all backward now. In this new reality, women behave in a sexist, patriarchal, and chauvinist manner, and men have been pushed aside to fulfill the usual female roles.
An alternate reality: When the tables turn
The point of I Am Not an Easy Man is very clever. Patriarchal clichés are normal in this world as well: taking care of the children and family, being undervalued in the job market, sexual harassment, hair waxing, cheating, rape, being single. But in the film, men have to endure these things.
Damien, horrified by the discrimination he experiences, joins a group of “masculinists.” Masculinists are men that fight for their rights and against the oppression of a system that sees them as inferior. For this reason, people constantly attack and vilify him in the movie. Not only women, but also many men who accuse masculinists of being homosexual, men who think that there’s nothing to change in this abusive reality against other men.
Can he go back to the real world?
When Damien wakes up in this parallel world, he meets a woman who is a reflection of him. A dominating, successful, manipulative, sexist, and arrogant woman who sees men only as something she can use to her benefit. They begin to have a strange romantic relationship and Damien redeems himself.
And although I Am Not an Easy Man’s ending might seem predictable, it actually isn’t. In fact, the whole movie shows the fallacy of gender roles and how fundamental it is to educate men and women equally.
This film is an attempt to destroy gender inequality once and for all and to show that genders are arbitrary social constructs that were created and maintained only to dominate part of the population.
It’s a great film whose ending will make you reflect on how ridiculous and harmful sexism is. I Am Not an Easy Man is a masterpiece that allows us to see how unequal things are in our society by putting the viewer in a situation of cognitive dissonance.
