Ce corps tant désiré (1959)
Directed by Luis Saslavsky

Film Review

Ce corps tant désiré was the last feature that the Argentinean filmmaker Luis Saslavsky made in France before he resumed his career in his home country having spent a decade in Europe to escape the Perón régime.  During the 1930s and 1940s, Saslavsky was one of Argentina's leading film directors and his later work - with the exception of the acclaimed Spanish film La Corona negra (1951), a close collaboration with Jean Cocteau - is all but forgotten.  In France, Saslavsky put his name to around half a dozen fairly nondescript films, which include the wartime thriller Les Louves (1957) and Premier mai (1958), a comedy with a young Yves Montand.

Boasting a superlative cast that comprises four of the most photogenic actors of the period - Daniel Gélin, Maurice Ronet, Dany Carrel and Belinda Lee - Ce corps tant désiré should have had much greater impact than it did.  The problem was that Saslavsky appeared to be stuck in the past and seemed to be oblivious to the sexual revolution that was going on around him.  Compared with Roger Vadim's Et Dieu... créa la femme (1958), whose plot and location the film bears a more than passing resemblance to, Ce corps tant désiré is laughably chaste and unbelievably static, even if the performances are somewhat more laudable.

During his French period, Saslavsky cultivated a distinctive cinematographic style that lies somewhere between Italian neo-realism and French New Wave, something that gives his films, whatever genre they may happen to be, a curious documentary feel.  This is particularly evident on Ce corps tant désiré, which looks like a weird collaboration between Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini, although the painfully languorous pace and over-deliberate artistry are more likely to lead you to mistake Michelangelo Antonioni for the film's author.

For all its mannered artistic pretensions, Ce corps tant désiré boils down to a fairly mundane tale of tangled romantic vibes that follows an all too predictable path.  Yet, that said, it does have an indefinable charm and a unique poetry that sets it apart from Saslavsky's other, more overtly populist, French films.  The English actress Belinda Lee makes a stunning object of desire (the film's title is highly apt) and it is hard to believe that within two years of the film's release this charismatic blonde bombshell would be dead, killed in a road accident in California.

Belinda Lee brings to the film the raw sensuality it badly needs, but her impact is diminished by Saslavsky's obvious inability to get the best from his actors.  Daniel Gélin's performance is frankly dull beyond belief and Dany Carrel (the perfect contrast to Lee) barely registers, whilst Maurice Ronet has to overact to make his presence felt.  Ce corps tant désiré is a meagre shadow of what the film should have been given the calibre of the cast at its disposal, and it's hardly surprising it has been forgotten, along with so much of Saslavsky's work.

Film Synopsis

In a small village on the Etang de Thau in southern France, two families, the Ferauds and the Messardiers, make their living by harvesting mussels in the saltwater lagoons.   Whilst Henri Messardier oversees the operation, his friend Guillaume Féraud squanders his time in the now seemingly futile pursuit of trying to create pearls artificially.  One day, a stunningly beautiful young woman name Lina appears in the village looking for work.  Never one to miss an attractive woman, Henri takes her on and in no time he finds himself irresistibly drawn to her.  In the end, Henri's lust for Lina becomes so overwhelming that he tries to force her into bed, but she resists and, knowing his reputation as a skirt chaser, pretends that she has no feelings for her employer.  Meanwhile, Henri scarcely notices the woman who is quietly pining for him, Guillaume's sister Marinette.  Whilst Henri is in prison after getting mixed up in a brawl Lina marries Guillaume, although it soon becomes evident that she does not love him.  After his release, Henri tries to convince Lina that his feelings for her are genuine and she now realises that she loves him.  Knowing how much upset she has caused, Lina sees that she has no choice but to leave Guillaume and the village...