The title is misleading, "Risky Business" would either mean a job that takes shortcuts with the law or one that can get you in trouble if you don't play straight, the meaning in French is more nuanced:, referring to ordeals inherent to one specific corporation, if you're a trick driver, it's the possibility to be robbed or sleep at the wheel, if you're a cop, you might get shot, and if you're a teacher, a masculine teacher for that matter, just pray you'll never live the experience of Jean Doucet, a teacher in a small little French village, played by Jacques Brel in his breakthrough role.
The opening credits sequence consists on a long travelling shot on Catherine (Delphine Desyeux) a young teenage girl, visibly upset, frantically running to her home and heavily panting, it's a long exhaustive sight to endure, but there's a reason director André Cayatte shows us that particular scene right from the get go. He could have started with the girl arriving at home, leaving the door open and getting to her room but Cayatte invites us to examine things carefully for there's a detail that might already reveal whether the story she's about to tell is a lie or not.
The 'story' hits a sensitive chord today, she accuses her teacher of touching her and it's no spoiler to say that it is a lie. Indeed, given the novelty of the subject, no film would have dared to make Brel play a despicable character. The film is about a wrongful accusation, which is revolutionary enough for the year 1967, but that would ironically strike as reactionary before the year 1968 where sexual liberation sowed the seeds of practices that are totally frowned upon today. "Risky Business" has aged better than that wave of soft-core flicks of the 70s/80s.
Now an average director would have inflicted us expositional scenes with some random course and we would see that Doucet is the kind of charismatic teacher who can inspire one or two crushes, but Cayatte figures that we could know as well about the character by starting from the middle and have the first class scenes serve the investigation. According to Doucet, it's all about that lighter and his wife Suzanne (also a teacher, played by Emmanuelle Riva) confirms: he got an expensive golden lighter, he suspects Catherine. One thing leading to another, he learns that she has a picture of him on a beach and a confrontation after class rapidly turn sour. That's how she decided to play the victim.
The choice of Brel is interesting, he's a singer, known for his natural artistic talent, he doesn't play a teacher as much as he lets his personality inhabits him, making his obliviousness ridiculously naïve and his unawareness that being too nice would make him like a potential predator, but that's a risk he's willing to take, because such a 'good' character wouldn't care about appearances. Precisely. And you can tell from the start that he's far from perfect, he does indulge to familiarity and treats Catherine like a spoiled little girl, he insults her and doesn't consider that she might want to be treated like an adult. That's his mistake. After one accusation, he's encouraged by the mayor to leave the town so he has time to hush up the affair but Doucet feels that would accuse him even further. Unluckily for him, another chain of events will have the best and prettiest student Helene (Nathalie Nell) and another girl, accusing him. The irony in all that tragedy is that each one has a different motive.
And so rumor spreads like a disease in the small village and Doucet must face the facts: his name is to be cleared from any suspicion or his career and life would be destroyed. The film is set at a time where these things were possible but where teachers would still have the benefit of the doubt, but three accusations force the cop to take measures very promptly not to face the vox populi, and so Doucet is arrested. The film avoids any spectacularity and Brel plays his Doucet as a resigned man who interiorizes his breakdown. The film also shows the mechanisms of defense of girls at puberty and how peer pressure or love can command the worst thing and make them incapable from discerning right for wrong, sometimes being even encouraged by their parents because of some 'prestige' the posture of victimhood can offer. Cayatte also denounces the hypocrisy of the press in a particularly revolting scene where Catherine is exposed to two male journalists who tutor her about how to look victim enough, and their male gaze is obvious, and horrifying. It's just like the film prophecized the cult of victimhood and the disturbing way it shares frontiers with the oversexualization of girls.
In that hellish nightmare, there's Riva as the wife, fiercely convinced of her husband's innocence but going as far as asking a woman (Muriel Baptiste) to tell the Police she had an affair with Doucet as an alibi. Suzanne is both the unsung heroine and collateral damage, she has an interesting exchange with her husband: blaming herself for not being able to have a child, fatherhood would make him look as an old man for the girls, not one they can flirt with. Her efforts all throughout the investigation are slightly rewarded but it's finally Doucet who manages to wrest the truth out of Catherine in a rather disturbing way (by today's standards) but effective as it ties the whole lie with the opening credits sequence, and the detail we could miss.
The film drags on perhaps two or three flashbacks too many, but delivers a powerful warning to teachers, especially in the social-network era. I am a teacher, and an experienced colleague told me he never stayed in a classroom with one student, if they don't like you, it could be risky, if they do, it could be even worse. Risky business, indeed.
