Life In a Glass House: The Model Couple

by R. M. Crossin



The Model Couple (Le couple temoin), a 1977 French film by director William Klein is an interesting but ultimately flawed look at a social experiment gone awry and the loss of privacy and freedom. Claudine and Jean-Michel are selected by the Ministry of the Future to represent the “average couple” and live in an “experimental urban center” for 6 months so the government can analyze their behavior and use the results to improve housing and other government programs in the future. Ordinary citizens can see the couple’s every move throughout the experiment on broadcast television. The Ministry of the Future constantly bombards them with a series of bizarre tests. One amusing sequence has them lying naked next to each other with multiple wires attached to their bodies and encouraged to use only sounds and/or numbers to express how they feel. Unable to control themselves, the couple laughs at the absurdity of the situation.

Gradually the psychological tests begin to become more intrusive as Claudine and Jean-Michel are told what to do and when to do it. It soon becomes clear that they are little more than product testers and promoters for the consumer goods and products that fill their apartment. The couple’s privacy begins to further erode as fans of the television broadcast come into their apartment to gawk and ask for autographs, walking through the set as if it was a museum exhibit. The objectivity of the experiment is called into question when the staff is shown encouraging the couple to fight and then trying to portray the argument to television audiences as something that spontaneously occurred, reminiscent of how reality television is anything but real considering all of the editing and interference by producers.

Eventually, Claudine and Jean-Michel begin to tire of constantly living under a microscope and begin to rebel by sabotaging their apartment and the experiment. Unfortunately, the end of the film feels rushed and the lack of a conclusion left this viewer confused and unsatisfied.