Baxter, Vera Baxter

Over a slow hour and a half, Duras' film unfolds in three scenes: narrative openings at a hotel bar introduce us to the absent figure of Vera Baxter, who waits in a large and empty villa she's set to rent; in the villa, Vera is visited by the former mistress of her husband, the enormously wealthy Jean Baxter; subsequently-in the film's real centre-the stranger (Delphine Seyrig) who'd heard Baxter's backstory at the hotel turns up at the house un-announced, listening in on a phone conversation between Baxter and her husband in which, with apparent, but unconvincingly finality, Vera announces that it's over, and then, in the subsequent, lengthy dialogue, insists that Baxter-who admits to frequently lying-will reveal her 'secret'. All this to slow pans around the enormous, clean, empty and arid villa, paid for with Jean's money; shots of the beach where Vera grew up; and of Thionville, the town where she now finds herself: sea, ruins and woods, emptied of people, but with an incessant, endlessly looped piece of South American music for pipe, guitar and handclaps, described by the characters as the sounds of a party from the villa nearest the sea, and in the film somewhere between diegetic and non-diegetic, real and hallucinated, ambient suggestion and maddening itch, a fly that won't go back out through the window. The revelation, if revelation it is, that Vera's one extra-marital affair was in fact set up by Jean as payment for a gambling debt reveals to a greater and more shocking extent the prison which is this bourgeois marriage-a marriage to a man, friends of her brothers, met as a teenager, enormously wealthy, but, according to Vera, a man who 'has money' rather than a 'rich man', who compulsively spends on gambling and on women in order to cover for his own lack. Vera in turn serves as accoutrement to the house (already paid for by Jean before Vera has even decided whether or not to say) as accoutrement to wife as accoutrement to husband, a financialised transaction in which sexual encounter serves as a payment for a debt between men, in which any act of freedom or defiance seems already circumscribed in a vicious circle of icy control. Vera has been sitting in the house, refusing to the answer the phone to her husband, her lover, the estate agent, contemplating suicide. But towards the film's end, the stranger tells her of the women who waited for their husbands, on holy wars or crusades, who learned to communicate with animals and forests, who were burned at the stake: one of these women was Vera Baxter, she informs her, in a flash of analysis that brings together the film's glacially, even languorously excoriating demolition of patriarchal marriage. At the film's end, the two depart for the hotel in town, not so much in sisterhood or escape, but with some slowly deepening knowledge beyond the incessant lies, tellings and re-tellings that both entrap and, perhaps, contain the seeds to understanding, itself the seed for liberation.

Although a major player in the French New Wave, the films of Marguerite Duras are, in general, not that widely known and "Baxter, Vera Baxter" is one that disappeared from view quicker than most. She wrote and directed it in 1977 with her usual collaborator Delphine Seyrig and a little-seen Gerard Depardieu heading a largely unknown cast and it plods along in typrical metronomic fashion as we are introduced to our titular heroine, (Claudine Gabay), by Depardieu who, it appears, is her current lover before meeting Vera herself as she languishes in some expensive villa regaling anyone who listens with tales of her sorry love life; Seyrig is one of the listeners.

This is the kind of art-house movie that gives art-house movies a bad name. Ponderous, pretentious and, although only ninety minutes long, feeling like an eternity in hell. It's the kind of rubbish you can see the Monty Python team sending up with dialogue so precious you may feel like switching the subtitles off altogether but even then you would still have to listen to the God-awful music. To be avoided like the worst case of Covid.

Depending on where you come across this film, you may see the genre label "mystery" used to describe it. This is, it turns out, the single best label. Here is a list of those things about this film that are not mysteries: the gentle, pleasant cinematography of Sacha Vierny; the lovely shot composition of filmmaker Marguerite Duras. The latter is bolstered by fetching production design, and excellent hair, makeup, and costume design. The filming locations are swell. And the single most clever thing that 'Baxter, Vera Baxter' does is to have the exact same song playing in the background for the entirety of the picture - and to have characters comment on it. I would love so much to say that I have more praise to offer here, or other remarks that are baseline positive. I don't.

To be honest, beyond those above aspects, things get murky. It's especially true in the entire first third of the feature, but continues to be a striking facet thereafter, that this often wants us to believe two (or more) separate and opposite statements are simultaneously true of the same thing. Or is there some major puzzle piece that I'm just not seeing? It sure seems to me as though the film is extraordinarily bad at identifying its characters - who they are, and what their relationships are to each other. This is especially true since Vera is spoken of in the third person even by people that she talks to, making me second-guess that the character identified as "Vera" actually is Vera. During the course of a conversation the dialogue may give two or more different impressions of who a supporting character is, or who they are in relation to Vera. Inanimate objects, and locations, receive the same treatment, being spoken of in conflicting ways even within the same conversation, and sometimes not being particularly identified at all. I spent an unreasonable amount of time watching unsure of the answer to basic questions of "who," "what," "where," or even "when" within each "scene."

I detect some story ideas in this. They range from "fair" to "great." I have a hard time believing that those ideas have been organized into a meaningful collection, let alone a singular plot, beyond what a one-line description might portend. "Might" is a key word, mind you, and the possibility of discerning "themes" is right out. Between that lack, the stated enigma that is the writing at large, and the very subdued tone, I'm not entirely certain that I can say the cast are acting. They're just sort of vaguely present. And I don't mean this as disparagement by any means; in the very least, I've seen Delphine Seyrig elsewhere and adore her. There are no nuances to pick up on in the portrayals, however: there is dialogue, and that's it. In fairness, during one slice of dialogue we get raised voices (heard, not seen), yet this is not a point in the movie's favor since the instances are grating on the ears for how they conflict with the soundtrack otherwise.

Someone, or possibly even multiple people, understand what Marguerite Duras was doing with 'Baxter, Vera Baxter,' and they appreciate this 1977 title. Indeed, I read other reviews and think, "Wow, they got a lot out of this, that sounds like something fantastic I'd like to watch." However, practically speaking, I can't entirely be sure that other reviewers were watching the same movie that I just did. I know that in the past I've had dreams that left me with a very different impression of this or that, some kernel of unknown knowledge that then wormed its way into my waking assumptions - assumptions which were, in turn, definitively not borne out by the actual experience. I have to wonder if this isn't how some have come to extract profound substance from Duras' picture. I've watched plenty of soft, low-key, arthouse, subtle, underhanded films and loved them. I get nothing at all from this, nothing except nice visual aesthetics and one inescapable (enjoyable) song. I'm glad for those who get more from it. For my part, I can't imagine recommending 'Baxter, Vera Baxter,' and I wish I had spent these ninety minutes on something else.

i didn´t enjoy this movie. i like other films with similar proposals (long shots, slow cadence, extended silences, bresson-like acting...) i accept that M.Duras had a personal way to understand the cinema, but i didn´t enjoy this movie.

One of the most unbearable Duras movies. With photography by Sacha Vierny, Delphine Seyring more languid than ever, and beautiful images of the coast. So far the positive part.

As many times with Duras, the problem starts with the text: ridiculous, empty, contrived, and so underlined by the style of the film that it seems that we are being shouted that it is art with capital letters.

Again the usual zombies chatting slowly and staring into space for what seems like an eternity.

A tribute to that intellectual kitsch of the time, with all the clichés and fashionable stereotypes about immature and cowardly men, empathic, profound and understanding women. Affected playing, stupid dialogues (that telephone conversation! With poor Perier shouting Vera!... Vera!), a dash of classy French eroticism (Vera naked with a pearl necklace), and a desolate and luxurious background of an uninhabited mansion with impressive windows to provide easy beutiful images.

Duras continues to have followers, although her film work is largely forgotten. Compared to the highly esteemed Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Perec... the literary work of this author is too many times of a badly repressed sentimentality, only tolerated by a style reputed for its conciseness and supposed precision (favorite word among the french critics of that time).

I must say about the music, which is ironically referred to by the characters as "outer turbulence": it plays continuously from the second scene, for almost 90 minutes, in an unbearable uniform rhythm. It's pretty at first, over the lonely beaches, the mansions, and the desolate mansion rooms. In the end it is already torture.

Her cinema is different, assumed to be targeted for a minority, with artistic flair, but that doesn't make it good.

Anyway this is far better than Le camion. For an increasingly select minority.