|
A shock of blonde hair amid penal grays announces the heroine, the mirrored shard that reflects her face at the onset will also provide her deliverance. Wayward youth, a comprehensive case on the Brigitte Bardot enigma ahead of Le Mépris. "Is she on trial for promiscuity or murder?" A restless fille, out of the middle-class provinces and into Left Bank Bohemia, savoring and suffering by carnal sensation. Her one true love is the aspiring conductor (Sami Frey) dating her sister (Marie-José Nat), "the Prodigy and Miss Perfect." Groped hatcheck girl, Yank's mistress, quasi-demimondaine, anguished siren emptying her pistol on a disparaging beau. Prosecution (Paul Meurisse) and defense (Charles Vanel) wade through the "jumble of hypotheses" in the courtroom, so does Henri-Georges Clouzot in a clinical return to the doomed lovers of Manon. The Nouvelle Vague bombshell between the sheets, her rump playing peek-a-boo with the Old Guard's camera. (Preminger's contemplation of Jean Seberg is strikingly analogous.) Jangly bar, stately orchestra hall, cavernous tribunal, arenas of rigid and fluid moralities. "High principles" and casual sex, breakups and reconciliations. "Is happiness incompatible with respectability," asks the uncomprehending judge. With reference to Circe and Beauvoir, plus Stravinsky on the telly. Latin Quarter culture has its shadow side, the existential friend sees suicide as protest-performance and keeps a noose handy in his flat: "When the audience arrives, the actor has already left the stage." The misunderstood vixen doesn't wait for the verdict, her departing view is one of grim illumination on a hospital slap, Bardot exalted by Clouzot in a profile close-up. The coda is a shrug shared by dueling counsels, "a great profession if it weren't for the clients." With Jean-Loup Reynold, André Oumansky, Jacques Perrin, Claude Berri, Barbara Sommers, and Fernand Ledoux. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |