La Drôlesse (1979)
Directed by Jacques Doillon

Film Review

La Drôlesse, Jacques Doillon's fifth film, is among the director's most beguiling, a minimalist drama involving two innocents enacting a kidnapping fantasy which seems harmless but which, from a detached adult standpoint, would appear deeply disturbing, in much the same way as René Clément's Jeux interdits (1952).  Doillon is one of those rare filmmakers who not only has an affinity with marginalised and disturbed youngsters, but also an ability to draw us into their world and make us see things from their perspective, without resorting to sentiment milking or other cheap gimmicks.  La Drôlesse is one of Doillon's simplest films and yet it leaves a profound impact, making us aware of the profound gulf that exists between the mind of an adult, which sees evil in everything, and that of a child, for whom everything is a game untainted by cynicism and moral prejudice.

Doillon is renowned for getting superb performances from his child actors, and in La Drôlesse he is particularly well-served by Madeleine Desdevises, an enchanting eleven year old who brings both charm and a startling reality to the film.  Had she not died three years later from cancer Desdevises would surely have enjoyed a successful acting career.  How tragic that this should be her one film appearance, her arresting performance beautifully complemented by that of her older co-star, Claude Hébert, who had previously distinguished himself in a similar role in René Allio's Moi Pierre Rivière... (1976).  There is something magical about the on-screen rapport between Hébert and Desdevises, as if they are the most vivid characters in a children's fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast being the one that most readily springs to mind.

The plot of La Drôlesse can be summarised in one sentence - it is all about the developing relationship between two unloved outsiders, a retarded 20-year-old François and the 11-year-old girl Mado he abducts and befriends.  From the outset, Doillon compels us to sympathise with these two unhappy individuals who seem equally starved of affection and yet are so manifestly capable of giving it.  It is with wondrous ease that François manages to persuade Mado into allowing him to abduct her, and even when Mado has the opportunity to escape she chooses not to take it.  Far from being a prisoner-captive relationship, what develops between François and Mado is a child's chaste imitation of a marriage, and it is soon apparent that the younger girl, the most intelligent of the two, is the one who is in command of the situation.

Mado's ambiguous nature, the innocent who is not quite so innocent as she seems, is alluded to in the film's title, which has a double meaning that is lost on a non-French audience.  In the Midi region of southern France une drôlesse means 'a little girl' but more generally it translates as 'a woman of loose morals' (hence the film's English title The Hussy).  It is François who is the real innocent, a young man with the mentality of a little boy who sees nothing wrong in imprisoning a young girl in his attic lair and who invents the most preposterous fantasy (which she probably sees through) to keep her there.  The innocence that Hébert brings to his portrayal has a sustained, almost heart-breaking purity that becomes increasingly less evident in Desdevises' more worldly wise Mado.

At one crucial point during her 'imprisonment', Mado practically orders François to give her a baby.  François's reaction to this is not just one of shock, he is disappointed and embarrassed, but being a pure soul incapable of adult vice he rejects the bitter apple that his Eve holds out to him.  Suddenly the game has become more serious, too adult for him to want to play any more.  This delicately ironic re-interpretation of the Fall of Man ends abruptly with a brief but touching coda in which François and Mado re-enact their first meeting, this time under the judgemental gaze of adults.  The latter do not see what we have seen, a harmless game in which both characters are complicit, but a crime committed by an unhinged young man who is about to face a far crueller form of incarceration.

Film Synopsis

Mado is an eleven-year-old girl who, ignored by her sisters and maltreated by her mother, leads a solitary, loveless existence.  One day, she is accosted by a young man, François, who forces her to accompany him back to his home, a bare attic room in his parents' house.   François's life is even more pitiable than Mado's.  His mother and stepfather treat him like an animal and, unable to find work, he survives on the pittance he earns by returning bottles and selling wild mushrooms.  François treats Mado as his prisoner and warns her that if she tries to escape she will fall into the hands of others who will harm her.  Far from fearing her captor, Mado grows to like him and regards him as a replacement father.  She even asks François if he will give her a baby but the young man insists she is too young...