Chamas de Verão

Yes, poisonous is the main word that comes to my mind where I watch this British movie made in France in the new British cinema manner, as Jack Clayton's THE INNOCENTS was a couple of years earlier. The two stories are obviously different, but the atmosphere so close to each other. Listen to the noise of the surroundings, it is a very poisonous atmosphere, very...I can't find the adequate, accurate words. if you have also seen THE INNOCENTS, a - I repeat - very different topic, you will notice although some similarities between the two. Just notice the birds song among the trees, at night, in the right middle of this fascinating, atmospheric and sooo disturbing tale. And certainly not a fairy tale. Far from that. Jeanne Moreau at her peak. But she always was at her peak.

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.

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.

This is a real gem from British director Tony Richardson (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Taste of Honey) and French jailbird Jean Genet, very rarely seen, filled with eerie and wondrous black and white photography courtesy of David Watkins, whose static camera seems to peer more deeply into certain moments than should be possible, making many of the outdoor scenes in particular feel mythic and fairytale-like.

Jeanne Moreau, as the sociopathic small-town schoolteacher, reminded me very much of Isabelle Huppert in another of my favourite films, La Pianiste - there's the same cold, reptilian, but hypnotically mesmerizing malevolence, and a desire on our part to understand what can't be understood. Ettore Manni, as the immigrant lumberjack Manou, has many moments of delicate injury and thoughtful reflection amid his lusty joi de vivre that makes him a much more appealing and relatable character.

It's a very simple story, and perhaps doesn't have all that much more to tell us other than people are unfathomably strange and usually smallminded, and that evil is mundane and often rewarded when hiding in plain sight in a fragile form. And yet the effect of it all is much more, and this feels both a very modern and forward-thinking film (the long, stationary shots reminded me particularly of the movies of Michael Haneke) and a very ageless film, unmoored from any particular era - either way, it certainly doesn't feel like it was made the same year The Beatles were making Yellow Submarine.

It falls a little short of greatness because of its slightness of story and lack of cohesion - most of the English supporting cast are a little weak too - but I can wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone wanting to see beautiful cinema and willing to go for a ride into the murkier waters of the human heart.

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.