Film Review
Les Belles manières was
a remarkable debut for first-time director Jean-Claude Guiguet. A
regular critic on
La Nouvelle revue
française, Guiguet began his film career by working as an
assistant to Paul Vecchiali on
Change
pas de main (1975), and it is Vecchiali's distinctive style and
approach to filmmaking that were perhaps the strongest influences on
Guiguet's work. Even though he made only four full-length films
and three shorts in a career spanning 22 years, Guiguet is highly
regarded, a committed auteur who brought some unique insights to his
bleak and often haunting portrayals of human relationships. In
addition to being an accomplished filmmaker, he was also a wise and
articulate social commentator.
Les Belles manières is
arguably Guiguet's best film, an intensely brutal and yet remarkably
subtle examination of class separation that bears a more than vague
resemblance to Robert Bresson's later films - notably
Mouchette
(1967) and
Une femme douce (1969) - in
its gently disturbing portrayal of an innocent driven to destruction by
social forces that harbour an indefinable but powerful
malevolence. The apparent friendliness that the two main
protagonists - the wealthy widow Hélène and her young
male domestic Camille - show towards one another is a convenient blind,
a mask of civility behind which their social prejudices are held in
check. It is the inability of these two characters to link hands
across the class divide that makes the film's tragic outcome
horrifyingly inevitable. Guiguet's concise modern fable concludes
with a jolt of despair, reminding us that there is nothing that divides
people more than class.
Hélène Surgère, an auteur diva and favourite of
Paul Vecchiali, and Emmanuel Lemoine, a non-professional actor whom
Guiguet literally dragged in from off the street, could not be more
different but they are perfect for their respective roles. With
her Dietrich-like allure, Surgère is the very personification of
bourgeois refinement, an impeccably mannered picture of
elegance. What could possibly connect this
divine creature with the stocky Lemoine, whose lack of poise and clumsy
utterances (not helped by a speech impediment) mark him out as a member
of the smelly
hoi polloi?
Such is the quality of the writing and acting that Hélène
and Camille strike us as being far more real than the trite archetypes
they represent, yet they effectively symbolise the rift between the classes that
was firmly embedded in French society at the time, and remains so to
this day.
Les Belles Manières has
some similarity with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's
Fox and His Friends (1975) and
Claude Chabrol's
La Cérémonie
(1995), all three films depicting a class collision that ends in a more
cruel and bitter way than we might have anticipated, although, had we
been more aware of the seismic possibilities of class alienation, the
ending would have been entirely predictable.
Hélène's unrelenting succession of little kindnesses
towards her employee may appear innocuous but, for the one on the
receiving end, it is a never-ending barrage of ice-lacquered
condescension, intended to remind him of his lowly place in the scheme
of things.
There is nothing inherently bad in either character.
Hélène believes her generosity to be genuine, but Camille
resents it because he sees it as phoney. It frustrates him that
he is incapable of arousing genuine feelings in his employer (even
desire), but what hurts most is his inability to hurt her. They
are like two species of animal that simply cannot understand each
other, let alone communicate with one another. By making
such a show of forgiving Camille his crime against her,
Hélène merely reasserts her superiority over him.
She even offers him a box of chocolates to show there is no ill-feeling
- another insult, and one that promptly gets flushed down the
toilet. In the end, Camille ends up like Hélène's
reclusive son, incapable of accepting his place in the social
hierarchy. Even this final act of rebellion leaves his
well-mannered employer unmoved, and her indifference does her
credit. Society cannot function unless everyone knows his place.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Jean-Claude Guiguet film:
Les Passagers (1999)
Film Synopsis
Camille, an uneducated young man from the provinces, arrives in Paris
to take up the post of housekeeper for the wealthy
Hélène Courtray and her reclusive son Pierre.
Not used to comfort, Camille soon makes himself at home in his
employer's substantial Parisian residence and is treated kindly by
Hélène, more as a distant relative than a servant.
Despite the kindness he is shown, Camille becomes increasingly aware of
the immense gulf that separates himself and his employer. One
day, he can bear Hélène's synthetic generosity no more
and commits a crime that should leave her in doubt as to how much he
despises her. Even when her young protégé is
arrested and thrown into prison Hélène cannot bring
herself to blame him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.