(France,
100 min.)
Dir. Claire Denis, Writ. Jean-Pol Fargeau and Claire Denis
Starring:
Vincent London, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Michel Subor, Lola Créton.
Bernard: Dégueulasse.Joan: What?Bernard: It means "bitch." Don't you remember?Joan: You're calling me a bitch?Bernard: No, don't you remember the last line of Godard's À bout de souffle? Belmondo calls Seberg a bitch. Dégueulasse. We saw it at the Thalia with the Dicksteins. I got you in for the children's price. You were pregnant with Walt.Joan: Like six weeks.Bernard: I still got you in for a children's ticket. You told me you didn't like Godard. You thought the jumpcuts were - [He is loaded into the ambulance]-The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)
Claire
Denis delivers a quick n’ dirty gangster pic à la nouvelle vague with Bastards
(Les salauds). It’s a piece of
unconventional pulp fiction that throws the book at wise-talking gumshoes and
gives the middle finger to mysteries with easy answers. Denis provides few
clues as Bastards moves along. The
film seems utterly pointless until it comes together with a snap and hits like
a bullet.
Bastards cuts from
Marco’s descent into the origins of Justine’s downward spiral to a narrative
that chronicles his own. Marco begins shacking up with a woman in the flat
below his rental. His lover, Raphaëlle (Chiara Mastroianni), is the mistress of
local businessman Edouard Laporte (Michel Stupor). A bitch to his bastard, the
attractive squeeze and the greedy slime ball make a most Godardianly noir pair.
Everyone in Denis’s underworld Paris is something from the
shadows. There are no good people in Les
salauds (save for a doctor and for Raphaëlle’s son) and every one of these
inglorious bastards reveals a dark side or performs a double cross. Justine’s
mother in particular turns out to be a despicable wench. The film blurs the
line between victims and violators, for even Justine doesn’t get off easy in
spite of the gut-wrenching abuse she endures.
By withholding a conventional detective who might rhyme off
means, motive, and opportunity to put the puzzle together, Denis puts the audience
in free-fall as the film comes together almost imperceptibly. The three women
in Marco’s stories are of interchangeable appearance, for Justine, her mother,
and Raphaëlle all share a hardened attractiveness (and similar blemishes). They
could be the same woman in three different guises or three sisters in one
grossly incestuous affair.
The seedy layers of the narrative’s maze reveal themselves unfolding
on different levels, so what seems like the beginning transforms to the
midpoint and vice versa as Denis shatters the narrative with a few jumps
between clues. London keeps the film together as Marco holds the greatest air
of mystery: the protagonist in one plot and the antagonist in another, Marco is
a man of ambivalence and moral ambiguity. He seems like the only righteous man
in the film even though his actions all seem ethically bankrupt.
Bastards defies
easy answers as the viewer leaps into the unknown. Denis delivers some
provocative twists and turns in this violent and aberrantly sexy picture that
dehumanizes its subjects into their most basic, most self-serving urges. The
gritty dankness of the film is a marvel of low-key mystery, as the film
relishes ugly shadows and grainy coarseness, thus making a city in which
nothing beautiful or remarkable resides.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Bastards screens in Ottawa at The ByTowne until Tuesday, November 5th.