Madame Claude

Madame Claude (2021), dir. Sylvie Verheyde. I am not sure why this Netflix film has such a low rating at imdb. I found it to be, if not especially original, at least a plausible depiction of the world's oldest profession. There are quite a few films about brothels and madames, and it's true that this one does not chart any new territory with regard to the profession itself. Nonetheless, I found the acting decent and liked that the film was based on a true story and followed the entire trajectory of the life of Madame Claude.

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.

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.

Summary

Interesting and at times controversial biopic of the most influential pimp woman in France. Also a film about the many and sometimes surprising but inevitable derivations of high-end pimping.

Review

Madame Claude is concerned above all with the heyday of who was the most exalted and famous pimp woman in France during the presidencies of de Gaulle and Pompidou, how she ran her "house" and her "mansion" and her relationship with the circles of power.

This Silvie Verhayde partial biopic of Fernande Grudet, aka Madame Claude, focuses on three aspects. On the one hand, she was the pimp of the most exclusive network of female prostitution for more than a decade, which led her to link with circles of power, organized crime and others that the viewer will discover, striking a dangerous balance between them. Coupled with her sixties setting, this sometimes surprising but unavoidable aspect of high-end pimping lends the film, at times, a fascinating and sophisticated spy-movie climate. Do not demand a broad development of these subplots from this film as if it were a documentary or a miniseries; they simply place us in what the protagonist negotiated, trafficked and dealt with.

The other two aspects, closely related to each other, have to do with his private life and the way in which he managed his network, concentrated in high-end brothels (houses and later mansions), describing how he related to "his" prostitutes and the "Community" or "family" that they made up, which the film describes in an unbiased way, but without sparing any of its facets. This description of the intimate realm of VIP prostitution (and by extension of prostitution in general) will be controversial for some. In particular, Madame Claude's bond with whoever was her right hand, the enigmatic Sidonie (in a very good performance by Garance Mallinier, protagonist of the notable Voracious), develops. The director and actress Hafzsia Herzi also appears in the role of another call girl.

Karole Roche carries out a very good interpretation, combining toughness, dryness and passion of her difficult and complex character, showing a Madame Claude determined to make a place in the male power plot, exercising tight control of her prostitution network with a imprint that went from the maternal to the despotic and ruthless and going through the difficult relationship with her family.

The re-enactment of the period is very successful, with a soundtrack with French themes from the period very conveniently located and the usual European casualness in the intimate scenes.