La Femme et le pantin (1959) - film review

In Spain, the rich and proud Matteo Diaz loves and admires his wife Maria Teresa, but she is paralysed and so Matteo must look elsewhere for his pleasures.  His wife accepts the situation because she knows her husband loves her and will always come back to her.  One day, at a Spanish fiesta, Matteo encounters a free spirited young woman named Eva, the daughter of a French collaborator with the Germans in WWII.  Matteo is violently drawn to Eva but she refuses to start an affair with him because he is too beautiful, too rich and represents everything she hates.  She will only give herself completely to him on the day he loses his fortune, his wife and his honour...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

La Femme et le Pantin is Julien Duvivier’s spirited but ultimately doomed attempt to update Pierre Louÿs’s raunchy erotic novel of 1898.   It is a minor footnote in the career of the great director but illustrates his determination to try to keep up with the times and defy his critics, many of whom would become leading directors of the French New Wave.

In the transposition of the story to modern day Spain, something clearly goes awry.  The end result is little more than a tepid and somewhat aimless melodrama, lacking in passion and with characters that barely rise above the level of two dimensional caricatures.  This notwithstanding, Brigitte Bardot was an ideal casting choice for the lead female role.  Since here revelation in Roger Vadim’s groundbreaking Et Dieu... créa la femme three years earlier, Bardot had come to symbolise the modern woman, beautiful and intelligent, aware of the power of her sexuality and not afraid to flaunt it.  She is, however, pretty well wasted on this film which, whilst beautifully shot, fails to leave a lasting impression.

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