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.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
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...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.