Piège

The wonderful French director Jacques Baratier was in a playful mood for the expressionistic film PIEGE. Designed for a small in-group of fans (like Jacques Rivette's similar '70s "games" movies), it has had only limited exposure, literally taking me 40 years to finally watch it after putting it on my Want List way back in 1971.

Though only enlisted as actor, Arrabal tends to dominate the proceedings, as a loquacious owner of a shop adorned with animal bodies, where he sells various traps, from rat to bear. The demonstration of how they work is highly realistic (and dangerous-looking), as you wouldn't want one of these babies to snap shut on your arm or head by accident.

The two icons of French cinema Bulle Ogier and Bernadette Lafont are perfectly cast as a pair of footloose ladies, who visit our hero's mansion. Film begins with him buying a large (bear) trap, and Bulle getting out of prison.

Similar to several Rivette classics, most notably CELINE AND JULIE, most of the hour-long experimental exercise concerns Bulle & Bernadette's antics in the house, ranging from spooky to kooky. They leave destruction in their wake, and unlike her later trademark sang-froid roles, Bulle is ebullient -making faces, smiling broadly (hard to imagine!) and completely uninhibited. Fans are sure to enjoy seeing the two leading ladies in sexy lingerie.

Weak link here is Baratier's protagonist Jean-Baptiste Thierree (non-actor whose chief claim to fame was marrying into Charlie Chaplin's clan), who at times resembles Johnny Depp's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, but for me was somewhat blank, closer to Sikki Nixx's impersonation in the porn video EDWARD PENISHANDS (minus the makeup effects). It takes more than lots of eye shadow to impress me.

Much of the mansion footage is denoted by an overwhelming mood of S&M and B&D, with projections of John Willie-style fetish drawings of women in bondage on the walls, and even some explicit torturing, as the gals tie up J-B and whip him with riding crop. Bulle was later to make film history as MAITRESSE, the title figure of Barbet Schroeder's unexpurgated S&M classic.

Later a prominent indie film distributor in Manhattan (who I got to know in the '80s) Jackie Raynal pops up in a cameo as a half-clad tortured lady (she was a prominent film editor in Paris at the time, often working with Eric Rohmer).

Sometimes striking, the black & white photography is variable, with several scenes seriously under-lit, perhaps a symptom of no-budget filmmaking. This was clearly not a commercial project in any sense, but something of a goof. Baratier does achieve both surreal and even the intended expressionistic effects, without breaking the bank.

As often happens, I contrived to close a marathon on a whimper rather than a bang and it was certainly the case with this "Halloween Challenge": not only is the film a total rarity (I only recently became aware of it) and very marginally related to the genre I was celebrating (in fact, I only included it because the site from where I acquired it labeled the movie as such) but it also proved to be quite a chore to sit through (despite lasting for a mere 55 minutes)!

I have often said that Surrealism works better when treated as entertainment: Luis Bunuel was its undisputed master in cinema (which is why he is my absolute favorite auteur) but, apart from the occasional attempt to shock an audience (notably his first two films), he learned to transmit his subversive messages (while always denying he had any!) in a subtle, indeed sophisticated, manner in order to reach a wider audience! Not so other noted directors whose work, however, leaves me cold to a considerable extent, namely Federico Fellini, Marco Ferreri, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal.

Tellingly, the latter turns up here as an actor – but he is actually the best thing about the film, as an intellectual seller of traps (hence the title), and it is amusing to watch him demonstrate the practicality of a variety of traps from his ever more unwieldy stock to a prospective buyer! The latter subsequently invites a couple of women to his house ("Nouvelle Vague" stalwarts Bernadette Lafont, a Claude Chabrol regular, and Bulle Ogier, who actually co-starred in Bunuel's greatest film i.e. THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE {1972}) – who, for no very good reason (since nothing comes of it thereafter) are made out to be nuns in the throes of devil worship! When they arrive, even though properly invited, they do not enter through the main door but opt to go in as burglars! Once inside, they try to cut through the safe with a blowtorch while giving vent to their anarchy by smashing everything that comes in their way. They cause a veritable mess – Lafont stomach-churningly plays around with assorted eggs, whereas the more child-like Ogier grimaces and moans incessantly! They paint their faces, disrobe down to their underwear, engage in a S&M routine, but only ever get to meet their host at the very end (even if he had actually been spying on the girls throughout their rampage!)...when the whole place blows up!

The point of it all is obscure and, frankly not worth unraveling; if anything, the film may owe a bit to Vera Chytilova's DAISIES (1966; which I own but have yet to watch), while looking forward to Jacques Rivette's 3-hour plus CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974; which I am familiar with and reasonably enjoyed). For the record, TRAP (an oft-used title, by the way, numbering among these a few interesting and versatile works) is the only film I have watched from this director and am only vaguely familiar with a trio of others from his not-so-vast filmography (comprising 6 shorts, 5 documentaries and 13 features made in the space of 55 years!). I generally admire the two actresses on hand, but this film certainly gives experimental cinema (with respect to both form and expression) a bad name – in retrospect, it is worth noting that, while the film was made in 1968, it was only first shown after having sat on the shelf for some 2 years...