Mademoiselle

The legendary Jeanne Moreau stars as Mademoiselle, a school teacher, filled with repressed sexual urges, in a small French village. She finds ways to vent her desires, mostly through arson and other destructive acts.

Mademoiselle seems like a film that desperately wants to be profound. It seems like a film that wants to say something about repressing desires, and the insignificance of mankind against nature. For the most part, it fails. It is unclear whether Mademoiselle's violent actions are the product of sexual desire or simple sadism. She sets fires and opens floodgates, but is it a sexual urge? Not really, she just seems to get a kick out of watching the townspeople scramble to save their lives and possessions.

And while the film is directed with an interesting visual flair that does often capture the beauty of nature quite well, it never really achieves a level of Lean-esquire glory or magnificence. Sure, it's pretty to look at, but what's the point? The acting is also sorely lacking. Ettore Manni, who plays Mademoiselle's (and everyone else's) sexual interest, is just not very good. He often unleashes these boisterous laughs, and every time I cringed. It's not even a little bit convincing. Even the usually wonderful Moreau fails to impress here. Her performance just feels hollow. As she has proved in the past that she can be very good, I blame director Tony Richardson, who, unlike someone like François Truffaut or Louis Malle, clearly doesn't grasp what Moreau is capable of.

That's not to say Mademoiselle is a failure. There are several deeply disturbing moments, one in particular involving a rabbit. The film seems to be trying to say that all human beings can be monsters at times, and we take out our suppressed aggression on whatever innocence may be around us. Still, the film seems to lack a core of genuine emotional depth, and therefore, lacks resonance. It doesn't help that it tends to move along at a remarkably slow pace, which causes it to try the viewer's patience at times.

However, I would probably give Mademoiselle a mild recommendation, if for nothing besides the attractive visuals and the fact that it contains Jeanne Moreau.

This movie, most notable for its authors, Playwright Jean Genet, is a lost classic which one ups Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid in its portrayal of the secret twisted desires of the rural french. Jeanne Moreau stars as a teacher in a rural french village. Her secret desire for the Italian logger Manou leads her to acts of brutal destruction on the town. A brilliant story combined with luscious camera work and nearly silent but incredibly tense scenes with Jeanne Moreau lead to making this movie an absolute must see.

Jeanne Moreau is simply brilliant in this role of a frustrated woman driven by madness to commit evil against the world. It has an ending that is wonderfully realistic and disturbing.

Jean Genet has created a world of simple people who are easily manipulated by a brilliant woman and their own fears and the results are predictable. Evil is here seen as not something grandiose and politically driven but as a simple everyday element of human nature.

The film's pace is wonderfully timed to draw you in to this strange little world that somehow feels normal. Somewhere in our subconscious mind, we know this place. I, for one, was not entirely shocked by the actions of any of the characters in this film. The evil that can result when people are not allowed either by religious authority or circumstance to express their natural sexual needs is here examined in gruesome detail.

See this film. It is brilliant.

Dark in its commentary about human nature, 'Mademoiselle' is both artistic and disturbing. Several say that it's the frustrated sexual desire for woodman Ettore Manni that leads to Jeanne Moreau's spate of secret violence against the town, but it's worth noting that the first fire set is accidental. I think it's more horrifying to think how arbitrary sociopathic behavior may be, that it may exist in all of us, and small turns of events turn her into a monster. The malevolence in her eyes is frightening, as is her cruelty to his son in her classroom, and we see how cruelty begets cruelty, as he dashes a rabbit repeatedly against the ground after an incident with her. That's one thing to beware of in the film, there is more than one scene of what appears to be actual cruelty to animals. There is also sexual humiliation - kissing boots, crawling on the ground, and getting spit on before being kissed - in a sequence that drags on over multiple scenes far too long towards the end. The film simply tries too hard to makes its point, sometimes with silly, obvious symbolism (for example, him unwrapping his snake and having her stroke it). Director Tony Richardson, with screen writing from Marguerite Duras based on a story by Jean Genet, certainly creates an image with this film, it's just not all that pleasant. On the positive side, he does capture several wonderful shots, mostly outdoors. It's as if he saying nature is beautiful, man is not. I also loved seeing Jeanne Moreau, who is fantastic.

In a small provincial village things occur, that has the occupants distressed, visibly stirred, as the floodgates are wound open, fires lit then lives are broken, beasts fall dead, leaving a vastly reduced herd. Tongues start to wag about the culprit and his reasons, the Italian who appears in summer seasons, foreigners not welcome here, we should make him disappear, but the constables maintain the laws cohesion. In the background out of sight and out of mind, there's a villain, who's quite the opposite of kind, presents herself as a school teacher, but deep down she has some features, that give her kicks, when those around her are maligned.

Left me thinking just how many people, who present as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, are actually nasty, conniving and sociopathic nutters. Jeanne Moreau performs the role with aplomb although I'm not sure this was a film that delivers quite as much as some of her other roles.