Chabrol's Inferno

One of the better, by which I mean both "perfect" and "inevitable", author-director pairings I've encountered is that of Ruth Rendell and Claude Chabrol. Rendell, the late British writer of exquisitely diabolical and bleak tales of human catastrophe may not have been adapted by Chabrol, the late French director of either an individual's moral collapse or the blossoming of that same individual's immorality, depending on how you look at it, all that often (there are only two: Chabrol adapted Rendell's The Bridesmaid in 2004, and her masterpiece A Judgment in Stone as Le Ceremonie in 1995), but the degree to which the two artists seemed to be on the same page is akin to the psychological twinship of David Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard. Cronenberg has thus far only adapted Ballard once, but when Ballard died it's a little surprising that Cronenberg didn't himself pitch over face down in the garden, mysteriously. 

All of which is to say that, just as it's impossible for me to watch certain Cronenberg films such as Shivers and eXistenZ that are not adaptations of Ballard (and in the case of the former was written in complete ignorance of Ballard's work) without nevertheless thinking of Ballard almost constantly, it is similarly pointless for me to bother trying to resist, any time I watch a Chabrol film, the specter of Ruth Rendell hovering over the proceedings. And even though Rendell was a writer of suspense and mystery novels, this juxtaposition occurs in my head even when the Chabrol film I'm watching is not of a similar genre. Which brings me to the Chabrol films collected together in a new Blu-ray set by Cohen Media. This trio of 90s films from the extremely prolific director did not follow one after the other -- in fact they're broken up by first The Eye of Vichy, his 1993 documentary about Nazi-occupied France, and the aforementioned La Ceremonie -- but as a package both harmonize with each other and feed into my Rendell thoughts, and break off sharply, leaving me stranded as someone who may have overstated his case. But in any event, enough about Rendell, would probably be the wise philosophy hereafter, and more of Chabrol.

But I'll be damned if Betty, the first film chronologically in the set, doesn't remind me of Rendell. At least as far as the psychology of the characters is concerned. In Chabrol's film, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, the titular Betty is played by Marie Trintignant with a wild mix of despair, depression, innocence, aimlessness, coquettishness, and, as it transpires, more. When we first meet her, Betty is horribly drunk, with the aim of becoming even drunker. A man claiming to be a doctor (and maybe he is, but it turns out he's also a junkie) is happy to oblige her, and take from her later whatever payment he deems fitting, one presumes, until Mario (Jean-Francois Garreaud), the owner of the bar to which the doctor has taken Betty, and Laure (Stpehane Audran), Mario's lover and a retired nurse who lives in a nearby luxury hotel, save her, with Laure almost instantly taking the younger woman under her wing. Laure rents a room, adjacent to her own, at the hotel for Betty, and helps Betty arrange to have her clothes and other personal items picked up from her former home, where her estranged husband, the son of a prominent military figure, and their two children still live. This all leads to Betty explaining to Laure how she ended up in this lowly alcoholic haze of a life (though Laure herself can drink, herself), most of which we learn in a series of flashbacks. Chabrol gives these scenes a while to take a full shape -- how and why did Betty disgrace herself in the eyes of her husband and her in-laws? what did Betty sell, as a way of buying her way out of the family and a future of public scandal, a decision that fills Betty with shame and seems to fuel her drinking? -- until finally a clear, or clear-ish picture of this tortured young woman reveals itself.

And yet. I can't go too much further without robbing Betty of too much of its considerable power. Though not a suspense film, Betty has within it a considerable amount of quiet suspense, and, more importantly, though not a mystery film, the force of its final impact is due to an accumulation of story and character information, and of performance. Chabrol, who up until the point that everything we need to know has been learned has been as invisible as ever, steps out of the shadows and kicks you, and everyone, in the stomach. At no point in Betty is a crime committed, yet by the end it's understood that the world the characters inhabit is an amoral one, and maintaining one's honor, and expecting others to do the same, is a sure way to bring Rendell-ian doom down upon one's head.

More terrifying still is L'Enfer, from 1994. Originally conceived and written by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the film was begun but left unfinished by Clouzot in 1964 (footage of the aborted project is used in Serge Bromberg's documentary Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno). Thirty years later, Chabrol adapted the original script, and cast Emmanuelle Beart and long-time collaborator Francois Cluzet as a young married couple who run a lakeside hotel. Initially they seem quite happy, but after a while Paul (Cluzet) begins to suspect Nelly (Beart) of being unfaithful with one of the hotel's regular guests, Martineau (Marc Lavoine, a kind of French version of Everett McGill). Even before Paul makes his suspicions known (first to the audience, eventually to Nelly), the viewer is clued into something being off in their relationship by Chabrol's use of a few frames of pitch black to separate some scenes. At first jarring, then perhaps merely an experiment in visually representing jumps in time, this technique achieves its full, if mild, note of disorientation when at one point it seems to cut off Nelly in mid-sentence.

When Nelly first learns of Paul's suspicions, she's touched, because she takes it as evidence of his love for her. But soon his jealousy becomes more aggressive, and, further, it becomes impossible to persuade him that he's wrong. Chabrol makes it fairly clear, I think, that Paul's accusations are baseless, but the precise reason Paul is so certain is less so (though I suspect casting Emmanuelle Beart as Nelly was not done arbitrarily). This fits, as his behavior, and finally his violence, become, one hopes, impossible to understand, and Paul shifts from a man one might find it possible to empathize with to a man one hopes to see hit by a bus. Both Beart and Cluzet are superb, but Cluzet in particular feels frighteningly authentic. Watching L'Enfer, as Cluzet's Paul begins to really spin off into a storm of choking rage and paranoia, I thought "This seems like exactly the kind of man, or one of the type of men, who murders his wife." I was reminded less of Rendell, I'll confess, than of another Chabrol film, his more naturalistic (in L'Enfer, Chabrol sometimes employs Dutch angles and back-projected shadows to highlight the irreality of Paul's thought process) Pleasure Party from 1975, which, along with Fosse's Star 80, strike me as the most depressingly believable depictions of murder, and murderers, I've seen on film. Anyway, with Cluzet, Chabrol again reaches those same heights of unease and menace, and with Beart that same heartbreaking confusion and fear, as the marriage she thought was happy becomes a prison of terror and abuse. She woke up one morning and found herself in Hell.

It's a curious irony that the last film in the set, 1997's The Swindle, is a light-hearted con artist thriller that also includes, of the three, the bloodiest moment of violence. But at a certain point, as is the tradition in this sort of light thriller, the stakes must be, or often are, raised. Chabrol, directing from his own original script, does so effectively, but up to that point The Swindle is simply great fun. It's about an at first glance mismatched pair of con artists -- Isabelle Huppert as Betty and Michel Serraut as Victor, the age difference pronounced, but other than business partners what are they? Their relationship doesn't appear to be romantic. In any case, the plot takes them to Sils Maria in Switzerland, where a local hotel is hosting a dentist's convention, which Victor believes offers many opportunities to rip off rich orthodontists. Betty precedes him there and when Victor arrives he finds out that she's already found a mark, but not one associated with a convention. The man, Maurice (Cluzet again), is hauling around an attache case stuffed with five million Francs, which he has to deliver for, etc. Victor and Betty begin palling around with Maurice, laying the groundwork to snatch the money, while, gradually, the question arises, as it often does in these situations, who is conning who? And who is conning that person?

I do not mean to sound dismissive with those glibly phrased questions. The Swindle really is a delight, Serraut in particular is wonderful (he's closer to being the star than he is to sharing the main stage with Huppert), and part of that delight comes from recognizing the structure but not knowing what exactly that structure is supporting this time. And there are just lots of little details, like Cluzet, somewhat more likable here than he was in L'Enfer, a little bit drunk, raving that cheese fondue "gives [him], personally, a taste sensation like no other." Chabrol seems to be on vacation a little bit here, and more power to him. It's fun to go along with him.

A Night of Pain - The Piano Teacher

At roughly 8:30 pm on February 20, 2009 – a Friday, as I remember – I began to follow through on what turned out to be a fairly bad idea. Not a thoroughly horrible idea, fortunately, but still, all things considered, not a great one, either. The idea, as some of you may be aware, was to watch three movies, in a row, which, over the years, had each attained a level of infamy due to their unpleasant and shocking content. These films are considered to have an effect on the viewer not dissimilar to a kind of psychological assault. Even if the viewer ultimately considers these films to be good, he or she can’t exactly claim to be happy to have made the decision to watch them.

Some people, when faced with the opportunity to watch such films don’t hesitate to do so. I believe that some such people consider it a badge of honor to have these particular notches on their belts. “Oh, you haven’t seen that movie?” they like to be able to say. “Is it because you can’t handle watching live dogs fed into a trash compactor? It’s all fake, you know. Anyway, I didn’t have much problem with it, myself. Besides, as a film, it’s quite fascinating to see how the director constructs the mise en scene in such a way as to make the audience complicit in the action. For you see, in the cinema…” and so on until you want to throw your drink in their face.

Then again, some of them are simply curious, or fascinated by the grotesque. I know I am! And that curiosity and fascination, no matter how I try to distance myself from it, is what brought me here today, reasonably fresh from viewings of Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s Inside, and, the granddaddy of all such films, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. I chose to watch the films in ascending order of infamy, which, by my calculations, put The Piano Teacher at the front of the line. And so, as I mentioned before, last night at 8:30, after a lovely dinner with my wife (who chose not to take part in this, and to retreat to the TV in our bedroom), I began.

Part One: Mild Discomfort

Or maybe not so mild, really, but I’m trying to build to a kind of crescendo by the end. You understand, I’m sure. But it’s true, the phrase “mild discomfort”, as applied to The Piano Teacher, doesn’t really cut it. Michael Haneke is actually something of a genius when it comes to making films that slide into the brains of the audience and start vigorously scratching. Apart from the weak pose of a film that is his overrated Funny Games, I have been absolutely riveted to the point of frozen existential terror (okay, that’s probably an exaggeration) by Cache’, Code Unknown, The Castle and, most especially, the brilliant The Seventh Continent. And now again here, with The Piano Teacher, whose titular character is played brilliantly by Isabelle Huppert.

The teacher’s name is Erika Kohut, and at the end of every day, which she spends teaching highly talented piano students, and training them for the big leagues, she goes home to her apartment, which she shares with her mother (Annie Girardot), who is quite critical of her daughter, and who seems to have something to do with the reserved and repressed woman Erika seems to be. Except that Erika isn’t really repressed, or maybe she was, and when she eventually fought through the repression, it was like a dam bursting, complete with all the resulting carnage.

The first time we realize something might be up, in a small way, is when she meets a young man named Walter (Benoit Magimel). He is something of a piano prodigy, and Erika clearly likes him (though she will eventually be the sole vote against him when he applies in front of a panel of music teachers for a place in Erika’s master class), or at least finds him fascinating. The bulk of their first conversation together, however, involves Erika talking about the details of the madness of Schubert and Schumann, her two favorite composers.

So, she’s interested in madness. Who isn’t? The problems, and the discomfort, begin when we start to see Erika away from her mother and students, which doesn’t really happen until about a third of the way into the film (this is one of the things that distinguishes this film from the next two in this triple feature). And the first thing we see her do, when completely left to her own devices, is go to a sex shop – if that relatively mild term is really the one I want here – and go into a booth where she feeds a machine coins so she can watch hardcore pornography (which Haneke shows us, too). Although Erika may take advantage of this service in the manner that we would all initially expect her to, we don’t see that. What we do see is Erika picking up the used tissues of the male customer who preceded her in this booth, and smell them. Watching that, I thought, “Finally! I’m uncomfortable! And I thought this project was going to be a bust!”

That action, paired with the hardcore images, made me think that I should probably prepare myself for anything and everything. Now, this film is much more than a series of shocking episodes, stacked one on top of the other, but in fairly short order we are treated to a scene where Erika retreats to her bathroom at home so that she can slice at her, ahm, area, with a razor blade, and another where she goes to a drive-in and walks around until she finds a couple having sex in the back seat of their car. While spying on them, she starts to urinate. The guy half of the couple having sex sees this and, as any of us would, gets very angry and yells at Erika until she runs off. I can understand the guys anger, but really, if you’re going to have sex in public, people are going to want to watch you while they pee. That’s always been part of the deal.

Eventually, Erika begins a…I guess you’d call it a relationship, with Walter, though it’s a relationship that holds a lot of frustration for the young man. By the end of the film, I had far less sympathy for him than I did when Erika first began her incredibly sadistic tease, because it turns out that he’s kind of a scumbag. But we don’t know that at first, and initially I could share his frustration at being strung along by Erika, until the scene where she finally, and meekly, shares with him a list of violently masochistic desires she has – she would like to punched a lot, for one thing – that would, one hopes, give any man pause. Except that it’s at this point that my sympathies more or less completely shifted to Erika, who up to this point had seemed cold and mean and frightening, because she suddenly becomes shy and fearful of rejection, not to mention deeply embarrassed by her own desires, yet hopeful that Walter will understand. Well, he doesn’t. And he’s not kind in letting her know that. This long series of scenes ends with the film’s biggest shock (even though it’s not graphic, it’s still a corker), one which devastates Erika and makes her desperation for Walter so great that she follows him to hockey practice and promises him everything he could want from her. Though he claims he’s disgusted by her, he’s willing to use her neediness to get sex from her, an act of vicious selfishness that leads to this charming bit of dialogue, delivered by Walter: “You should wash your mouth out more, not just when my cock makes you puke.”

Boy, how many times have I had to say that in my life!? Also, spoiler alert.

So, shocked I indeed was by the first film in my triple feature. But I was also – and not to change tones too suddenly, I hope – quite moved by Huppert, who, despite the film’s extreme subject matter, is actually amazingly quiet in her brilliance here. And Haneke shoots it all in his typically cold style, moving his camera to a distance just far enough back to allow us to see all the little details of Erika’s life, the things that sum her up, even though you still can’t really explain her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of Part One. This will not, as I previously claimed, be one long post, but rather three longish posts, because otherwise no one would finish. Plus, I would have run out of steam by the end, and my writing would have suffered, and nobody wants that. And let's not forget that by splitting this into three parts will raise my post count, which for some reason I seem to care about. Anyway, now we all have an opportunity to visit loved ones, maybe get something to eat, and ultimately regroup before settling down to deal with Inside. And boy do I ever have an opinion on that one. Stay tuned.