Les Valseuses
„The Women“, „A Midsummer Night’s Dream“, „One Two Three“ and this film. I think these are all the films that HE mentioned when we talked last time, and by pure coincidence, I started by watching this one. (Of course it helped that both versions of „A Midsummer Night’s Dream“ are basically unavailable over the internet and I am not sure if I would be willing to buy such a film without seeing it before.)
But old French films are always rather easy to get your hands on, it seems. The simple label „French film“ evokes connotations such as lots of sex, Parisian chic, alternative characters and vain but beautiful women… Incidentally, these apply pretty much on „Les Valseuses“ as well, except that there is not that much style to it. The most stylish in the whole movie are probably the nude shots of Miou-Miou, whose silhouette is even nicer than Emanuelle Béarts in my opinion.
After reading a few commentaries on Amazon, I realized what I tend to dislike about the film and what a lot of people (most likely women) criticized about it: The movie is horribly misogynist. Now, I am not exactly a feminist either, but there are limits for me, which is when a film touches the bounds of reality. Miou-Miou’s character was a nice person, but utterly worthless; there is no reason why a woman in real life would just be friends with some guys who abuse her, randomly have sex with her (without her enjoying it) and especially hurt her in a degrading way (squeezing a woman’s nipples is probably equivalent or even worse than kicking a guy between his legs). That is where the film was utterly pointless for me. I can understand the breast-feeding scene and I especially liked Mademoiselle Huppert’s defloration, but the way they treated Marie-Ange was over the top. It was sweet to see that they have come to like and cherish her over the course of the film, but I did not quite see where the character development came from.
What was great about the movie, however, was its premise and, to some degree, its characters. I like how those guys simply were utterly dislikeable delinquents and I liked the slightly comical situations that ensued from their crazy actions. They were very human in their purest form, and I can see how there is a little more subtle and ironic truth in it than it seems at the beginning. Of course it also helps that the whole movie is a neverending road trip, I have a certain weakness for road trip type movies after all. Nevertheless, I am not sure if I would recommend the film; there probably is a reason why this film never entered any film canons, but there surely also is a reason why the film used to be popular and shot Gérard Depardieu into celebrity.
PS. I had a silly dream today: I dreamt that I was on a trip with a few friends and the hotel owner (she looked like my old German teacher!) who I had to give back the keys at check-out went down to a bank near the synagoge, but instead she entered the synagoge. And so I tried to slip in as well, but I accidentally forgot to take off my shoes (yes, wrong religion, I know, but this is what happened in the dream), and thus I was unable to enter. I took a last peek into the synagoge to see if rich people really were sitting in the front and poor people in the back, only to see that in the front, there was a bunch of black people wearing suits and looking like Isaach de Bankolé in „The Limits of Control“. Am I a hidden racist? XD
All in all, this dream kind of made me think of „Les Valseuses“, but I wonder why. Is it the trip? The political incorrectness? There was no sex in my dream after all, but who knows what Freud would say about it…