Mademoiselle

The film opens with nuns singing as they climb a hill. But any similarity with the Sound of Music stops there. Jeanne Moreau is evil incarnate. Like the ex-girlfriend that is love and light to everyone she meets. But only you know the truth! She is lovely. She is beautiful. She wanders the hillside like Aphrodite blessing the ground on which she walks. Each carefully observed detail of the countryside is there in her natural and engaging charm (and heightened by use of natural sound only). Gentle and sensitive. The sort of person everyone wants to know. Do we fall in love with her in the first few minutes? She picks up some birds' eggs and gently crushes them. What? Some mistake n'est ce pas? Did we really see that? Have you ever refused to believe an awful thing because a person 'couldn't possibly be bad'? A friend, a lover, a spouse even. Or the upstanding member of a community. A politician? The velvet glove. Kennedy - Vietnam. Gandhi - bloody Partition. Catholic Church - Spanish Inquisition. The super-spin smile. The well-meaning malice. The invincible persona of goodness. And in the dark it conceals what we refuse to believe.

Am I too harsh - all over some eggs? The water-lock she opens girlishly. The lighted cigarette by which things burn. Is it wrong of us to suspect her childlike innocence? See her soft lips! See her run to help you in need! Comfort you. Always there for those less fortunate.

Mademoiselle works as a typist at the police station and also as a schoolteacher. Both respectable jobs. She's an upstanding new member of the rural hamlet where things go mysteriously wrong. A chaste girl, of course. (Except when she's having sex – but if she doesn't get caught, does it 'count'?) She sweetly tells the children stories of Gilles de Rais. How brazen (for well-read viewers!).

Apart from the femme-fatale-in-overdrive aspect of this film, it is also visually satisfying in every possible way. Rampant open-air sex - in a thunderstorm - has never looked so good (or so convincing). Natural sound creates more atmosphere than an added soundtrack ever could. Dramatically, it has the long-drawn out obsession-tension of a Lady Chatterley (What is it with these woodcutters??) but with much more finely chiselled characters. While Moreau's poisoned chalice has similarities with her role in Diary of a Chambermaid, this Mademoiselle is altogether more accessible, more extreme, more downright nasty.

Some may find fault with the artistic overstatement. Or the fact that a cast of many nationalities has to somehow be made to gel. If you are turned off by the tone of it, you may even find it preposterous. But let it work its magic. Director Richardson is most ambitiously at his height of 'British New Wave,' and master-storymaker Jean Genet shines. Moreau is a monstrously formidable force. Mademoiselle is one of the most dedicated portrayals of female malice ever brought to screen. It is the femme fatale made real, and without any puritanical come-uppance to relegate her to the realms of noir fantasy.

David Watkin's (The Devils, Chariots of Fire, Out of Africa) dreamlike photography icily dramatises the charged eroticism. The Panavision lenses "drool" over the bodice-ripping element, the fiercely animalistic sex. Fellow director Richard Lester once described it to Steven Soderberg saying, "Mademoiselle was the most beautiful black-and-white film I have ever, ever seen . . . they were using different stocks which had different flare factors and different qualities of the way the blacks and greys played for each scene. You were choosing stock to make something look great. It was very experimental." It has also been described as, "black and white widescreen noir," making effective use of the large frame, often placing the characters right or left at the limits of our vision.

Some critics have gone as far as to suggest that Mademoiselle is demonically possessed. The other view is that it portrays the havoc caused by repressed passions, and in which the church is complicit. This latter, more reasonable view, is supported by a careful reading of the film. The hypocrisy of the clergy is also hinted at in moments of humour. "Some are called to a life of suffering," says the priest sententiously. To which the hard-working old peasant woman retorts, "You seem to forget that I make your bed!" Whatever your feelings, it does give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Come when I whistle."

Dark in its commentary about human nature, 'Mademoiselle' is both artistic and disturbing. Several say that it's the frustrated sexual desire for woodman Ettore Manni that leads to Jeanne Moreau's spate of secret violence against the town, but it's worth noting that the first fire set is accidental. I think it's more horrifying to think how arbitrary sociopathic behavior may be, that it may exist in all of us, and small turns of events turn her into a monster. The malevolence in her eyes is frightening, as is her cruelty to his son in her classroom, and we see how cruelty begets cruelty, as he dashes a rabbit repeatedly against the ground after an incident with her. That's one thing to beware of in the film, there is more than one scene of what appears to be actual cruelty to animals. There is also sexual humiliation - kissing boots, crawling on the ground, and getting spit on before being kissed - in a sequence that drags on over multiple scenes far too long towards the end. The film simply tries too hard to makes its point, sometimes with silly, obvious symbolism (for example, him unwrapping his snake and having her stroke it). Director Tony Richardson, with screen writing from Marguerite Duras based on a story by Jean Genet, certainly creates an image with this film, it's just not all that pleasant. On the positive side, he does capture several wonderful shots, mostly outdoors. It's as if he saying nature is beautiful, man is not. I also loved seeing Jeanne Moreau, who is fantastic.

Jeanne Moreau is simply brilliant in this role of a frustrated woman driven by madness to commit evil against the world. It has an ending that is wonderfully realistic and disturbing.

Jean Genet has created a world of simple people who are easily manipulated by a brilliant woman and their own fears and the results are predictable. Evil is here seen as not something grandiose and politically driven but as a simple everyday element of human nature.

The film's pace is wonderfully timed to draw you in to this strange little world that somehow feels normal. Somewhere in our subconscious mind, we know this place. I, for one, was not entirely shocked by the actions of any of the characters in this film. The evil that can result when people are not allowed either by religious authority or circumstance to express their natural sexual needs is here examined in gruesome detail.

See this film. It is brilliant.

This movie, most notable for its authors, Playwright Jean Genet, is a lost classic which one ups Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid in its portrayal of the secret twisted desires of the rural french. Jeanne Moreau stars as a teacher in a rural french village. Her secret desire for the Italian logger Manou leads her to acts of brutal destruction on the town. A brilliant story combined with luscious camera work and nearly silent but incredibly tense scenes with Jeanne Moreau lead to making this movie an absolute must see.

First a warning: if you can't stomach any scenes of animal suffering, do yourself a favor and steer clear of this film.

I just saw a brand new print of this film. In all its Cinemascope glory, this is a breathtaking film, incredibly photographed and directed. And there are some incredible touches in the telling of this story.

My problems with this film derive from a few things: 1. though the goal of this film is to build a dark and compelling yarn of the simple banality of evil, there are ways that you can read this film that really undo that goal, especially as it pertains to the female character at the center of the drama and the way we're ultimately encouraged to view the impetus of her rage, 2. the town ends up being a shadow character which is effective in some ways, but it is also unsettling.

No question this is an important film that should be seen.

7.5