Very free adaptation of the famous Jacobin tragedy today attributed to Thomas Middleton. Like so many Jacobin tragedies, it is a fascinating and crazy hodgepodge of betrayals, murders, torture, which in this case is characterized by a tone close to farce and full of humorous nods to the audience about the amusing conventions of the genre, all in a language unforgettable in its wit and expressiveness.
What remains in the film is little more than the distribution in scenes. In the play Vindice, whose fiancée was poisoned by the vicious Duke becomes Geraldine Chaplin whose brother was murdered by the fearsome pirate Bernadette Lafont. In the play he has to put an end to a whole family of degenerate rulers, here she has to kill the whole band of pirates. Above all, a particularly twisted crime remains and some verses taken out of context.
Initially we think that Chaplin is a young woman who has read the Jacobin tragedy and has been inspired by it to carry out her particular revenge. To give herself strength she recites some verses of it from time to time and uses Vindice's way of getting rid of the duke to get rid of one of her enemies.
The most direct reference is the fun organized by Chaplin and Markham in the court of the pirate Lafont, a very particular representation of the most striking scene of the original tragedy.
But in the last forty minutes, it seems that Rivette is afraid of the short scope of the film, certainly a fascinating formal diversion gloriously inconsequential in its contents, and wants to take a plot twist, in line with a dark mythological fight that he plans to develop through other of his films. The substitution of the avenger Chaplin for that lunar deity, and of the pirate Lafont for the solar deity, is not intended to be justified in any way, while it invalidates the previous scenes from the plot.
We can understand that Chaplin disguised his mythological fight in a Jacobin revenge to deceive everyone, but not that for almost two hours she believed herself to be in that role. We no longer know if in those last scenes there has been a possession of poor Chaplin's body used by the lunar deity for her own purposes. Anyway it's not like it's worth racking your brains over that nonsense, either. The truth is that the film leads to an incomprehensible last half hour reminiscent of a psychedelic party.
But what makes the film interesting is its extraordinarily sophisticated visual style, mannerist staging, and light-hearted narration.
Nothing is or pretends to be credible, it seems that everything is a purely formal element, a pirate fantasy in a world different from the real one, which is not governed by logic but by the artistic effect, the visual composition, the internal movement in each shot , the planning of the scenes.
There is a clear camp and over-the-top effect, in the eccentricity of the costumes, the exaggeration of the poses and the behavior of the actors, close to cross-dressing, especially of Lafont as the pirate Giulia who behaves like a drag queen.
Chaplin is more mannerist and artificial than ever, obviously guided by Rivette, Markham as always discreet and understated, Lafont in the purest drag style, men mostly have a residual presence.
Until the last half hour, everything has a fascinating and ridiculous effect at the same time, although incomprehensible in terms of its purpose, with exceptionally beautiful images, the natural settings, the castle decorations, the careful props and even the colorful and unclassifiable costumes.
It suffers from an excessively gratuitous tone, from disguising the motivation of so much carnival too much. But it is highly recommended for lovers of the rarities of French cinema of the seventies, of formal experiments, of the most sophisticated dramatization.
