Tief in den Wäldern

It's like a Millet painting; you know, The Angelus or something, a bunch of decrepit peasants tilling the field, misery written on their faces. The French highlands provide a stunning backdrop for all this misery. The sex that takes place between the two leads shouldn't distract us from the almost medieval poverty and desperation these people experience.

Isild le Besco has now made five films with Benoit Jacquot; she's established a solid working relationship with him. I enjoyed the Sade film, and the crime story that crosses several countries (A tout de suite}. I wish they would make a more traditional story next time.

This is a story set in 19th century France of a poor and seemingly simple-minded vagrant who tricks his way into a prominent do-gooders house by pretending to be a deaf mute in order to bewitch and rape his virginal daughter (Isild Le Besco). After he deflowers her, she ends up following him "deep into the woods", but is unclear if she does so willingly or because he has some strange power over her. . .

It's hard to agree with most of the criticisms of this movie. It is a very ambiguous film, but it is an intriguing ambiguity rather than a frustrating ambiguity and vastly preferable at any rate to the usual Hollywood tendency of hitting the audience over the head with every blunted plot point. The idea of a woman coming to sympathize with her rapist is pretty "politically incorrect", but there is such a thing as Stockholm Syndrome, and you also have to reckon with the fact that this was set in the 19th century where women's sexuality was kept so deeply repressed that it's not hard to imagine they might fall under the hysterical sway of any man who releases it (or merely use him as an excuse to their explore own repressed sexual desires). A goodly portion of the movie does involve little but the two characters wandering around the French countryside and having sex. But I don't really find the natural beauty of the French countryside boring, and I certainly don't find the natural beauty of Le Besco's incredible body the least bit boring.

Isilde Le Besco is really quite an amazing actress. There is no Anglophone actress of her talent that would take on the heavily sexual and constantly undraped roles that she does (the only possible exception being Kate Winslet). She is not conventionally pretty, but she is unconventionally beautiful, and like Kate Winslet I'm sure the crazies (who consider anorexia sexy) might call her "fat", but she is really just a naturally voluptuous young woman, and I think everybody has just forgotten what one looks like after being exposed to all these walking skeletons with fake breasts. The actor playing the vagrant "Timothee" I've never seen before or since, but he is certainly effective in this role and he does have a diminutive Rasputin-like charm to him.

This movie is available with English subtitles, but it has never been released in America. Still if you get a chance, it's definitely worth checking out.

Just saw this as part of a French Film Festival in Manila which as somewhat uncomfortable not knowing what audiences here find acceptable, though I think I only saw a couple of older audience members leave, everyone else enjoyed the show, many applauded at the end.

The story was well written an and directed, the cinematography well done except for a few odd zoom-in close ups. This is not a movie for those easily offended by adult themes as there are more than a few. The leading actress and actor both gave very good performances and though the story is a little predictable, it still leads you in directions you might not expect.

This story, while the scenario may seem weird and unreal, is a real fact story which happened in the Var department of France in 1865. The are very official and serious judiciary documents reporting those facts found by the police investigation then. On can find a good transcript of that in the Charles Lancelin'book named "La sorcellerie des campagnes" pages 86 to 91. Once one is aware of this, the message to be found in this film has nothing to do with displaying sex relationships or investigating boy and girl relationships in the XIXth century in France or anything "normal" like that. The message is about the strength of hypnotism and magnetism can exert on weak minds or nervous minds. The whole enquiry shown at the end of the film tends to stress that but the writer and the director of the film had obviously some difficulty getting that point out obviously enough to get it through the public. Nevertheless, this film is a very acceptable effort to tell us an account of this magnetism relationship which can occur when both magnetizer is quite strong and magnetized one is easily overwhelmed. One must not see this as an ambiguous situation where the magnetized one could have escaped easily, whatever the physical distance, as it is essentially a mind rapture, beyond physical dimensions.

This film is not unique in the French cinema;it belongs to a long tradition of country stories set in the 19th century :in the grand tradition of such movies as Truffaut's "L'Enfant Sauvage" ,Tavernier's "Le Juge Et L'Assasssin" or Allio's "Moi Pierre Rivière Ayant Egorgé Ma Mère Ma Soeur Et Mon Frère " and some other minor works.

"Au Fond Des Bois" is perhaps disturbing to some,but it does not improve much on them;it's odd it did not get a PG 12 whereas it contains rape and nudity !The problem of the film is that it does not devote enough time to "why?";the two actors ,not very attractive,are not bad for all that ,but ,and of course in the case of the girl,they do not display enough ambiguity :after some time ,she seems to appreciate her mate and it seems that she finds that quite romantic ,which the last sequences reinforce.The wild boy may possess magnetic powers ,a la Rasputin, but they are hardly necessary for a while :only the burn can pass for an argument ,although the heroine might be a glutton for punishment!The depiction of the girl's milieu leaves something to be desired too:the father,the good doctor,might be over possessive and she might have been brought up a sexually repressed girl.

The movie essentially consists of wandering and having sex in beautiful landscapes ;it's not bad,but not a movie to be seen twice.