Classic Movie Review: Under the Sun of Satan (1987)

Under the Sun of Satan (1987)

Directed by: Maurice Pialat.

Written by: Sylvie Pialat and Maurice Pialat based on the novel by Georges Bernanos.

Starring: Gérard Depardieu (Donissan), Sandrine Bonnaire (Mouchette), Maurice Pialat (Menou-Segrais), Alain Artur (Cadignan), Yann Dedet (Gallet), Brigitte Legendre (La mère de Mouchette), Jean-Claude Bourlat (Malorthy), Jean-Christophe Bouvet (Le maquignon), Philippe Pallut (Le carrier), Marcel Anselin (Mgr Gerbier), Yvette Lavogez (Marthe), Pierre D'Hoffelize (Havret), Corinne Bourdon (La mère de l'enfant), Thierry Der'ven (Sabroux), Marie-Antoinette Lorge (Estelle).

 

Those who take their faith seriously can be absolutely tormented by it. It is easier to just blindly believe is a benevolent God, who has a plan for you, and will protect you – unless of course it’s your time to go, and then, again, that’s all part of God’s plan. But some of the deepest believers are the ones most tormented by doubts – they take questions of faith seriously – because they take the questions religion raises seriously. And perhaps because they do, they end up doing the most damage.

 

Maurice Pialat’s Palme d’or winning drama Under the Sun of Satan stars Gerard Depardieu as Donissan, a priest who does in fact take questions of religion seriously, and because of that he is plagued by doubts. Those doubts in turn make him a fairly ineffectual priest – unable to provide much in the way of comfort or guidance to his parishioners. His boss and mentor is Menou-Segrais (Pialat himself), who has doubts as well – but is better able to hide them, and deliver something to the parishioners that they need. It may be cynical, but it helps.

 

The key sequence in Under the Sun of Satan takes place when Donissan is sent to walk from his small town to another – over the fields. A man stalks (Jean-Christopher Bouvet) after Donissan, and engaging him in conversation – playing on his doubts. There scenes thrum with even homoerotic of homophobic tension depending of your view on them – and, of course, it slowly becomes clear that this mysterious stranger is Satan himself. As a result of this encounter, Donissan is either blessed or cursed, depending on your view, with some Godlike powers – visions, the ability to heal the sick, etc. But are you still doing God’s work, if the power to do so comes from Satan? And what happens when your good intentions all go awry? Nowhere is this more apparent that with Mouchette Sandrine Bonnaire) – a teenage girl, with a self-destructive streak, engaging in one affair after another with older men – one of whom she has just killed. Donissan wants to save her – but he well damn her instead.

 

Under the Sun of Satan is the kind of talky, heady religious drama that Ingmar Bergman could have done remarkably well. It has a cynical view of, and religion – and questions seriously the notion of God and belief. Naming one of the major characters Mouchette also undeniably brings to mind Robert Bresson’s film of the same name from 1967 – about a young girl suffering through one humiliation after another. Bresson was another filmmaker who could make long, serious conversations about God cinematic and interesting.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t really think that is Pialat’s strong suit. He is better suited in films like Police – large, sprawling casts of people talking over each other, rather than this type of serious, religious drama with long conversations about God, religion and belief. It’s a testament to the performances by Depardieu and Bonnaire that they work as well as they do – although it’s hard to deny that they are merely symbols, not real characters – and no one else is even given that depth. The film looks great – particularly that long journey between towns featuring the scenes with Satan – and the events leading up to Bonnaire’s shocking act of violence.

 

But taken as a whole, Under the Sun of Satan is the type of film that is more interesting to talk about than it is to watch. Everything is here is metaphor and symbolism, and long drawn out conversations. Bresson could have pulled this off. Bergman and Carl Th. Dreyer probably could have too. Hell, at the moment, I’d love to see a Paul Schrader version. But in the hands of the immensely talented Pialat, I just don’t think he quite figured out how to pull it off as anything more than an exercise.

Classic Movie Review: Police (1985)

Police (1985) 

Directed by: Maurice Pialat   

Written by: Catherine Breillat and Sylvie Pialat and Jacques Fieschi and Maurice Pialat.

Starring: Gérard Depardieu (Louis Vincent Mangin), Sophie Marceau (Noria), Richard Anconina (Lambert), Pascale Rocard (Marie Vedret), Sandrine Bonnaire (Lydie), Franck Karoui (René), Jonathan Leïna (Simon), Jacques Mathou (Gauthier), Bernard Fuzellier (Nez Cassé), Bentahar Meaachou (Claude), Yann Dedet (Dédé), Mohamed Ayari (Momo), Abdel Kader Touati (Maxime), Jamil Bouarada (Jean), Bechir Idani (Barman René), Sylvain Maupu (Clément). 

 

The first half of Maurince Pialat’s Police seems to be a gritty police procedural – but a tough cop Mangin (Gerard Depardieu) trying to break a drug ring, and doesn’t care to play by the rules to do it. It opens with Mangin getting a tip from a criminal – who knows his two options are to flip or go to jail. This leads Mangin and his men to the apartment of Simon (Jonathan Leina), who is from Algeria, and his young girlfriend Noria (Sophie Marceau) – who Mangin brings in for questioning. For the first hour of the movie we watch as Mangin and his men do increasingly violent, corrupt things to try and get the results they want. They want a confession, and even if they have no evidence, they’ll push harder and harder and harder to get it. There is nothing against Simon and Noria for example other than the testimony of the guy who flipped – the cops find nothing in their apartment. But that doesn’t mean they’ll let Simon and Noria go. It also doesn’t mean they are innocent either – as the movie makes clear they are not.

 

The film’s main writer was Catherine Breillat – who had already directed a couple of films by this point, but here is writing for Pialat. She is, as always, interested in the sexuality of teenage girls – here, the 19-year-old Noria. For the first hour, this film feels like it is about the thin line between cops and criminals – how similar they are, and can be. Depardieu’s Mangin feels like a villain – a heartless, violent middle aged man who doesn’t care about right or wrong, or the truth – and who will do anything to get a confession. And Noria feels like a doe eyed, fresh faced victim – perhaps her boyfriend dealt some drugs, but now she is being dragged down and punished right alongside him – even with no evidence.

 

Then, a strange thing happens about halfway through the movie. It jumps ahead a few weeks – Noria has been released from jail, but Simon is still inside, even without much in the way of evidence against him. We end up spending less time in the police station – and more time outside of it, with the same people. Mangin becomes a more complicated character – even somewhat sympathetic – a lonely widower, hardly a true believer in his police work either. He doesn’t think twice of hanging out with defense lawyer Lambert (Richard Anconina), who like everyone else in the film is morally bankrupt. Much of the second part of the film is a long night out with Mangin, Lambert, Noria (who hired Lambert) and young prostitute Lydie (Sandrine Bonnaire) – who Lambert likes, and is trying to get Mangin to arrest her pimp to get her away from her. Lambert falls for Noria – and starts to believe it’s love. But it’s more complicated than that for Noria – who may have stolen some money from Simon’s family, and is looking for protection.

 

One can certainly argue that the film’s view is a little misogynistic – as during the course of the movie the violent, abusive cop becomes a more complex, sympathetic character, whereas the doe eyed seeming victim becomes cold and calculating – using men to get what she wants. She essentially becomes a femme fatale – using stupid men for her own purposes. This is, oddly, in line with much of Breillat’s work – and it always rubs me the wrong way.

 

And yet, Police still largely works – even with this. It is mainly because in Pialat’s film, everyone is flawed, everyone is corrupt. The line between good and evil doesn’t exist, as everyone is corrupted in some way, shape or form. Can you really feel bad for Depardieu’s Mangin – given what we see him do, even if Noria leaves him heartbroken? And given everything we see in the film, is Noria really worse – or just responding to the circumstances that she had in front of her? It’s a testament to the performances by Depardieu and Marceau that they end of complicating these characters, who could have seemed like constructs created by a screenwriter to cynically manipulate.

 

In the end, Police is an odd film – it lures you in with the promise of a genre picture – a procedural – only to eventually conclude that the procedure doesn’t matter. It is about the system, not this case, and the people inside – all of whom get used, but none of whom are innocent.  

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: A Nos Amours (1983)

A Nos Amours (1983) ****

Directed by: Maurice Pialat.

Written by: Arlette Langmann and Maurice Pialat.

Starring: Sandrine Bonnaire (Suzanne), Maurice Pialat (Le père), Christophe Odent (Michel), Dominique Besnehard (Robert), Cyril Collard (Jean-Pierre), Jacques Fieschi (Le beau-frère), Valérie Schlumberger (Marie-France), Evelyne Ker (La mere), Pierre Novion (Adrien), Tsilka Theodorou (Fanny), Cyr Boitard (Luc).

There is always a danger in movies about a young girl’s sexual awakening, written and directed by an older man, that the portrait of sexuality we see will not really be the young girls, but the director’s projection of what he thinks the young girl’s sexuality is. I cannot think of another movie that handles this problem the same way Maurice Pialat’s brilliant A Nos Amours does. Pialat himself plays the young girl’s father, and it is their complex relationship full of repressed lust on both sides, that really makes up the heart of the movie.

The movie stars Sandrine Bonnaire, in a brilliant debut performance, as Suzanne a 15 year old French girl. Right from the beginning, it is clear that the men in the movie are going to view her as a sexual object. There is an early scene on a boat, where the men, including her older brother, stare laviciously at her. And yet, this scene also establishes Suzanne as a girl unto herself as well – the camera holding back, regarding her as she stands at the head of the boat starring out at the water like the old statues of busty mermaids did at the head of the boat. She is free, but also trapped. This pretty much describes her life.

Suzanne has many relationships with boys in the movie – but they are mainly only half glanced on by Pialat. Rarely, do we see her with the same boy twice as she is certainly sleeping around. The boys come in and out of focus, never really establishing themselves as characters – sure they use Suzanne, but she also uses them. Lest you think this is simply a movie about a teenage slut, the movie is much more perceptive and complex than that.

Suzanne’s sleeping around pretty much drives her already screwed up family to the breaking point. Pialat’s father character is the most complex of the other characters in the movie – and the  scenes with him are really the heart of the film. The first involves him freaking out, and slapping Suzanne when she announces she is going on a double date to the movies – he knows she has no intention of going to the movies, and they purpose of the date is really sex. But later that night, when she returns, the two of them have a tender scene together, where he seems worried that she is not happy – that she has lost a dimple. The two of them talk openly, and yet buried beneath this scene is longing, desire and lust on both of their parts. It is quite clear that Pialat’s father feels something not fatherly towards Suzanne – and equally clear that he is repressing it. It is this scene where Pialat tells Suzanne she is leaving her mother because she has gone even more insane than she was already – but this isn’t the real reason. He is doing it to get away from Suzanne, and his desires.

It is after the father leaves, that the two other family members – her older brother and her mother come into focus. Her brother’s feeling towards Suzanne are also confused and lustful – yet he has a harder time controlling them than his father did. He lashes out violently at Suzanne multiple times and calls her a slut – all in the name of “protecting” their mother. But really, he lashes out more like a spurned lover than a brother. The mother, brilliantly played by Evelyn Ker, has as Pialat pointed out gone completely over the deep end. Always mentally unstable, she seems to have lost it when he left. Her feelings towards Suzanne are a mixture of motherly worry and also resentment and jealously.

All of this sets up the two pivotal final scenes – one in which the father returns to the apartment the family lives in during a party, and causes a scene, where the buried resentment and cruelty this family inflicts on each other is somewhat exposes. Pialat apparently did not tell the rest of the cast that he was going to crash the party as it were, and the result is a painful and raw scene – and the most awkward dinner party in film history. Finally, there is one more scene between just Pialat and Bonnaire, on a bus, as she gets ready to depart to America with her new husband. Although the two of them don’t raise their voices, he is more cruel to here than at any other point in the film.

Maurice Pialat is an interesting director. He never fit in with the French New Wave, because he was older, got his start in filmmaking later in life, and was more concerned with the emotions in his films than in being innovative visually. He is often compared to John Cassavetes, who made films with larger than life emotions, and messy relationships. This is the only film of his I have seen, but it certainly makes me want to watch more. He gets a natural performance out of newcomer Bonnaire, whose sexual confusion is shown mainly through her facial expressions. This is a remarkable performance for a 16 year old to give, as so much of what happens is left unsaid at her part. She is, in many ways, the healthiest of the family members – she has at least learned to get what she wants. And yet, she too is trapped. At the end of the movie, she gets away from her family, but in another way, she will never escape. She is leaving one prison for another. One wonders if she’ll spend her life looking for her father in other men. For his part, Pialat does a remarkable job at directing, writing (along with Arlette Langmann, who undoubtedly helped given the movie a much needed female perspective) and also as an actor. He commands the screen when he’s there, giving a performance that is more nuanced than the rage he displays at times suggests.

A Nos Amours is not an easily digestible film. It will undoubtedly disturb some viewers, and bore others. And yet, with this film Pialat has crafted one of the best portraits of teenage sexuality I have ever seen on screen. It is the film he will be remembered for.