A rundown suburban villa is home to three friends who live happily together. The trio who make up the ménage-à-trois in "Pourquoi Pas!" are occasionally seen in bed together, but their arrangement apparently has little to do with sex. The sight of these characters asleep as a group--peaceful and comfortable--suggests that they have a stable household. Fernand (Sami Frey) and Alexa (Christine Murillo) are fugitives from failed marriages. His ex-wife won't let Fernand see his children because of his bisexuality. Louis (Mario Gonzáles) is a young bisexual musician who couldn’t get along with his parents. Midway through the story, the film introduces pretty, naïve, and straitlaced Sylvie (Nicole Jamet), whom Fernand wants in the ménage. They have mundane chores to attend to, and much of the film's interest lies in the tiny details of their communal lifestyle. Fernand is the tidy one, the one in charge of getting the vacuum cleaner fixed. Alexa brings home the bacon with a job reading to a bedridden woman who likes to hear the same book over and over again. Louis' contribution is less apparent, and he's more two dimensional than the others. His character with a family history of madness is poorly explained. The strange ménage attracts the attentions of a police inspector (Michel Aumont), but he is also drawn into this world of mutual tolerance and free love, becoming their friend when his own wife leaves him and he has a midlife crisis. The happy community looks as if it might be falling apart when Fernand falls in love with a young middleclass woman.
Although it's slightly dated now, this entertaining and witty tongue-in-cheek film shows that nonconformity isn't what it used to be, and offers a few amusing glimpses of the bohemian world, or what's left of it. There are shades of Luis Buñuel in the way bourgeois attitudes are portrayed and made fun of, but the film is basically a conventional French comedy drama, the kind they don't make in Hollywood. The timing is not good, and the storyline is a little awkward, with subplots that are confusing tangents. Jean-Pierre Mas composed the music, and Coline Serreau wrote the script and directed. In French with English subtitles, the English title is "Why Not!".
