La prisonnière

I am giving this film a 10 because I can see that it is, in its own horrific way, a masterpiece. It's title ' Woman in Chains ' is misplaced, as it deals as the French title says about being imprisoned. How it is to being imprisoned to destructive desires that can lead to a living hell within that borders on death and madness. It is in my opinion a film to be endured, and not to be enjoyed in any way whatsoever. It is set in an art gallery in Paris, run by a man, superbly played by Laurent Terzieff who gets his addictive fix out of making women utterly submissive to his desires. Clouzot with his cold eye shows us how certain aspects of Modernism in art can be revealing of the nothingness within that people can fall into. Kinetic art with its flashing lights and movements folds mechanically into destroying others as well as oneself. His argument is persuasive, as set against this background women are used and mentally tortured, and clearly the film is also an experiment on how to use Conceptual art on film. The ending is shocking and gruelling, and those who see this work have to be prepared to cope with it. I saw it in Paris and was so disturbed by Clouzot's vision of human beings being slaves of willing masters ( mainly heterosexual, but hints of male homosexuality and Lesbianism are thrown in ) that I walked the streets all night to avoid nightmares. And of course the masters of domination are equally submissive to their own domination. A hard film that was prescient of future decades, and it is not just about the latter part of the 1960's. A must see for those who can endure its joyless depiction of warped eroticism.