Les Mauvais coups (1961) - film review

In the French countryside of the Jura department live Roberte and Milan, a couple whose ten years of marriage is on the rocks.  Roberte and Milan’s passionate love affair has transformed itself into a fervent hatred.  Isolated in their house, jealous and unhappy, Roberte tyrannises her husband by becoming an alcoholic.  Milan, a former racing car driver, was the one who wanted to move to the country, so that he could go hunting and write his memoirs.  Now bored with Roberte, Milan wants to leave everything behind him and maybe resume his former profession.  This is when Roberte, totally dependant on her husband, meets Hélène, a fragile young teacher from a nearby village.  Although she is afraid that Hélène might become Milan’s mistress, Roberte decides to use her in a dangerous game...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

François Leterrier, revealed as an actor in Robert Bresson’s French classic Un condamné à mort s’est échappé, made his directing debut in 1961 with Les Mauvais coups, a psychological drama based on an autobiographical novel by reporter-writer Roger Vailland.  Whilst the film is technically impeccable, it is not what you would call an easy film to watch.  With only three characters and a sparse screenplay it has little in common with the style of the Nouvelle Vagle but the credits, played over a forbidding landscape, and an ominous score bring a distinctly Chabrolesque touch of menace and tension.

The slow-moving story may infuriate some but it would be unfair to call it a day after the first fifteen minutes, as it is definitely the kind of film that grows on you.  The great Simone Signoret agreed to lend her name to Leterrier’s first work and she plays the central character.  It is a work in which all of the elements of a couple in perdition are handled by Leterrier with delicacy, ambition and a ruthless precision.  In one memorable scene with Canadian-born French actress Alexandra Stewart (sensitive and mysterious), Signoret’s performance is a master-class of subtlety, suggesting so many nuances: a desire to relive her youth, an attempt to win back her husband’s love or the anxieties of being a frustrated lesbian.  The aforementioned Claude Chabrol was certainly inspired by this sequence for his own Les Biches (1967).  The unknown actor Reginald Kernan is an inspired choice - he is amazing in the tortured and troubled part of Milan. In 1964, we will see Kernan for the last time on screen with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura in Henri Verneuil’s popular success 100 mille dollars au soleil.  Not for all tastes but rewarding, Les Mauvais coups is available on DVD in an amazingly good transfer.

© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium) 2012

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