_Violette_, one of the best films of the decade
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All on Mon Sep 4 11:09:18 2017
“I give myself to adjectives body and soul, I die with pleasure
for them.”
"Sometimes I dream of aphrodisiacs I could soak my pen in, so
that the words would be in love with me."
_Mad in Pursuit_, Violette Leduc
A film about writers ought to send the audience running to their
books. It is shocking how many films fail the minimal requirement;
not _Violette_. Director Martin Provost, who has built a sizable
oeuvre around woman artists, fortifies Violette Leduc's formless
life story with her poetic imaginative prose, like steel reinforcing
cement. Writing is her salvation, and like the best work in
French literature, her florid sentences leap off the page and
alight on the mind and the senses at once, more vividly and nimbly
than any cinematic image. _Violette_ is ultimately a love story
about the needy Leduc, seeking affirmation in companionship all
her life; only her true love turns out to be her words -- the
grudging companion she has always known.
The opening credits find the protagonist running out of darkness
towards light. Chased by men and dogs, she sheds her black-market
loot and dirty cash. Does the scene already foretell her destiny?
At the film's end she basks in the sun's love in the South of
France, alone but with a new-found contentedness. In between,
she endures her literary apprenticeship, loses Maurice Sachs,
tussles with Jean Genet, and most of all pines for the legendary
Simone de Beauvoir. Not lovers or even friends, the two brilliant
women are arrayed in _Persona_-like tableaux, back to back,
shoulder to shoulder, face to face. Their unique relationship
forms the core of the film, lends it the compassion, heroism, and
humanistic spiritual transcendence that is practically unheard
of in cinema today.
"... To qualify is to take an absent being in one’s arms.
Everything that we write must be absent. Were I to describe
a stone for a hundred years, my words would not have the
hardness, the disdain, the cold exclusion of the stone."
The broad-featured Emmanuelle Devos could be born to play the
awkward Leduc. Her comedic timing, her expressive face that
readily turns sadness into farce, are the cinematic facsimile
of Leduc's tragicomedic words in the autobiographical _Mad in
Pursuit_ on which much of the film is based. Sandrine
Kiberlain, with many neurotic oddballs on her acting resume,
could have played a different, thrilling if less expansive,
Leduc. Instead she dyes her hair, ties it in a severe bun, and
transform into a spitting likeness of de Beauvoir. The two
women cannot be further polar opposites. Kiberlain's Simone
is a monk: serene, composed, and disciplined. She gently rebukes
Leduc's tandrums and self-pity bouts like a fond mother would.
The actress' incisive, understated portrayal of this intellectual
icon rivals Barbara Sukowa's much lauded work in _Hannah Arendt_.
She recognizes the truth and talent in Leduc's writing, and
the frankness about sexuality that she knows will revolutionize
women's place in the world. (Personally I find Leduc's
prose more exciting than de Beauvoir's in her prize-
winning _The Mandarin_, but of course the latter is a far
greater thinker and philosoher.) Curtly and authoritatively,
she mentors Leduc in every way: artistically (editing her
manuscripts), professionally (negotiating with publishing
houses), and financially (via anonymous stipends). Leduc's
books frankly describe Leduc's infatuation with her benefactor,
much to the latter's embarrassment. Stoically de Beauvoir
fends off the personal advances as gently as she is capable
of, while keeping the fragile Leduc productive. She knows
that writers, their affairs and their drama, fade away;
their work endures. Leduc slowly learns that too, after
serial unrequited love for her unattainable fellow artists,
bouts of depression, and even institutionalization.
Jean Genet, Jacque Guerin, and Leduc's mother Berthe are
the other major figures in Leduc's Parisian circle. The
relationship with Berthe is a particularly codependent mess,
with the childless Leduc frequenty taking over the role of
mother. Indeed inverted parent-child relationship is a main
subtext of the film. A particularly funny scene features
Leduc as a haplesss mother in an amateur film-within-a-film,
pushing Gene, as her oversized child, in a stroller. In
reality, Leduc loves Genet and his writing, and he can barely
tolerate her. The episode where she disparages his play
_The Maids_ during a rehearsal is played for laughs in the
film. In _Mad in Pursuit_, she uses the exact words, but
the setting is her apartment, and the incensed Genet
is said to physically assault her for the affront. Provost
wisely eovkes the two giants of that circle -- Camus, and
de Beauvoir's companian Sartre -- by their absence. The
real-life Leduc knows both, but the decision to treat the
pair as distant rumors emphasizes the prevailing casual sexism
and indifference to woman writers in the post-war years. War
against this bias is part of de Beauvoir's life mission, and
Leduc becomes her semi-willing cause celebre.
"Genet drifts from the Ethics of Evil to a black aestheticism.
The metamorphosis takes place at first without his realizing
it: he thinks that he is still living beneath the sun of Satan
when a new sun rises: Beauty."
_Saint Genet_, Jean-Paul Sartre
Violette Leduc is only a black-marketeer and lesbian -- a minor
outlaw compared to Jean Genet. De Beauvoir never pens her
biography; instead she encourages Leduc to write about herself.
The resulting work, _La Batarde_, is so frank about sexuality
and abortion it is censored. But it also lucid and honest --
qualities that the French existentialists treasure above all.
The book, somewhere between confession and exorcism, goes
a long way towards explaining Leduc's low self-esteem and
her trainwreck of a life. (She is an unwanted bastard in a
very class-conscious French society, and her parents have
not exactly been attentive or supportive.) The manuscript
is given to de Beauvoir around the time the latter loses
her own mother. In a profoundly beautiful transition, where
image (Kiberlain alone on her bed in the dark) segues to
spoken words (out of the first page of _La Batarde_,) Provost
humanizes, universalizes Leduc's sentiments, anxieties, and
yearning for reconnecting to her past while also shedding
its shackles:
"My case is not unique: I am afraid of dying and
distressed at being in this world. I haven't worked,
I haven't studied. I have wept, I have cried out in
protest. These tears and cries have taken a great deal
of my time. I am tortured by all that time lost ...
I wish I had been born a statue; I am a slug under
my dunghill. Virtues, good qualities, courage,
meditaioin, culture. With arms crossed on my breast
I have broken myself against those words."
But the filmmaker, with an assist from de Beauvoir's forward
to _La Batarde_ dramatized as a radio interview, refute any
biology-as-destiny identiy-politics predetermination. Her
attainment of her own spiritual metamorphosis is accompanied
by a subtle progression in the soundtrack, from turbulent
strings in the beginning to Avro Part's serene, transcendental
chamber pieces in the end. Her career, it must be said, is
also made possible by the warmth and support from her more
famous fellow artists, no matter how scandalous her behavior
and chaotic her life. In an age where celebrity muckraking
and cynicism about art prevail, Provost's optimism about
humanity and its potential are bracing to behold. Violette
slowly recovers. Her books will testify that she never quite
loses her insecurity; unloved, she remains mostly alone the
rest of her life. But she has kept writing, and literature
is immeasurably richer because of that.
"I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral
of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and
full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses
against my lips."
(for A.)
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