Madame Claude

Trying to think what the point of this film is. Is it purely biographical? Probably. Are there any cinematic values? Probably not. An environment of prostitution would lend itself to some character development. There is none. Okay, there may be some other redeeming features. An interesting storyline, some surprises and plot twists. Nope. Normal acting and direction, nothing superb. This film doesn't rise above mediocrity.

It's a different movie and not too much happens. It meanders along from start to finish with little change.

It's watchable, but it's not for everyone.

I started watching as the story of Madame Claude is quite famous. I dropped the show after 30mn. Too much sex and no story line. Actors are not even good.

It's a hard pass... don't loose your time.

Fernande Grudet's life is a fascinating story but the film falls short of making it compelling. The main focus is on the requisites of the sex sex trade: how she manages her burgeoning business and the growing power and influence that go with it. It does little to dive into the interesting characters that inhabit her story.

Given the story's potential, one could imagine dramatic encounters with the police and her influential clients. But when such opportunities arise, the encounters happen mostly matter-of-factly except for that memorable meeting of Sidonie and her father in the restaurant where he got his comeuppance.

Not a high drama action film but interesting biopic of a highly ambivalent figure in a well reconstructed Paris of the late 60s/early 70s. Madame Claude is certainly no feminist hero, but at a very basic level she not a brutal pimp either: she does provide a "family" for her "girls" while managing her "business" in a male dominanted environment to satisfy male desires (but that does not prevent her from exposing her girls to dangerous situations and she certainly does not get the sympathy of the viewer). She operates at the fringes of legality yet police and security forces use and exploit her to their ends (and drop her likel a hot potato), while she also has to deal with the figures of the underworld... Film scores very highly on the reconstruction of the peculiar atmoshere of the period, and I recommend viewing this picture.