Moreau is gorgeous, but it's a disagreeable film
Jeanne Moreau in Venice, listening to Billie Holiday's Willow Weep For Me while slinking about a bedroom before bathing? Yes, please. She's such a delight, but the story wasn't for me. She plays a tough high-end prostitute more than capable of looking after herself, but the men trying to buy her things to get into her pants and being so blatant about it are yucky at the outset. One of them (the rather bland Stanley Baker) is a writer who gets quite obsessed with her, and despite her telling him not to fall in love with her, naturally does so. The story then takes a page out of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, with her telling him to his face that he's a loser and repeatedly torturing him, and him coming back for more despite getting married to a beautiful young woman (Virna Lisi). It's not a story I care for or can empathize with.
It's great to see Moreau and my heart trilled a little with each close-up, but these characters and their relationship are so unlikeable. Even smaller things in the script are disagreeable. When she tells her backstory, she says she was orphaned at 11 and had to sexually satisfy a married man living upstairs for money, which, even as she impishly says it's fictitious, is still unpleasant. At one point the man in explaining his infidelity to his fiancée tells her "I love all women, 6 to 60," which is also quite creepy. 6??? When Eva laughs at him for falling down, he winds up and belts her in the face, which she takes simply by saying "only my husband can do that." But it's the main story, a man repeatedly coming back to humiliation, that's hard to watch.
The production quality is decent but not exceptional, especially considering the location. It's certainly not helped by the dubbing. Aspects of the story like the plagiarism that comes out or the fate of his wife seem like melodramatic padding. The film is much too long and I didn't care how it was going to turn out. It's worth seeing if you love Moreau or the city of Venice as there are some really beautiful moments for both, but overall, this was a disappointment.
It's great to see Moreau and my heart trilled a little with each close-up, but these characters and their relationship are so unlikeable. Even smaller things in the script are disagreeable. When she tells her backstory, she says she was orphaned at 11 and had to sexually satisfy a married man living upstairs for money, which, even as she impishly says it's fictitious, is still unpleasant. At one point the man in explaining his infidelity to his fiancée tells her "I love all women, 6 to 60," which is also quite creepy. 6??? When Eva laughs at him for falling down, he winds up and belts her in the face, which she takes simply by saying "only my husband can do that." But it's the main story, a man repeatedly coming back to humiliation, that's hard to watch.
The production quality is decent but not exceptional, especially considering the location. It's certainly not helped by the dubbing. Aspects of the story like the plagiarism that comes out or the fate of his wife seem like melodramatic padding. The film is much too long and I didn't care how it was going to turn out. It's worth seeing if you love Moreau or the city of Venice as there are some really beautiful moments for both, but overall, this was a disappointment.
- gbill-74877
- Jan 3, 2023