Mademoiselle de Joncquières (2018)
Directed by Emmanuel Mouret

Film Review

In the course of eight films over fifteen years, Emmanuel Mouret has matured into an auteur filmmaker of virtually unrivalled charm and versatility.  His films - which range from the exuberant juvenile farce Laissons Lucie faire (2000) to the sophisticated comedy of manners Fais-moi plaisir (2009) - may be wordy and narrow in scope (focused on the emotional dramas of two or three characters) but they are never dull and, thanks to Mouret's exceptional screenwriting ability, they show an understanding of the human condition that is as compassionate as it is profound.  Now, with his ninth feature Mademoiselle de Joncquières, Mouret has reached the pinnacle of his art, serving up a confident and totally irresistible foray into period drama that has a more than passing resemblance to Choderlos de Laclos's novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (or at least the lavish Stephen Frears adaptation).

Mouret takes his inspiration not from de Laclos but from a story that Denis Diderot included in his famous 1784 novel Jacques le Fataliste - a tale of calculated revenge concocted by a beautiful widow to humiliate the libertine lover who grew cold on her.  The same story provided the basis for Robert Bresson's 1945 film Les Dames du bois de Boulogne, although this is a much darker work, its more cynical handling of the revenge story reflecting the mood of pessimism that prevailed in France after the Occupation.  By contrast, Mouret's adaptation is lighter in tone and makes the two main characters - the vengeful widow Madame de La Pommeraye and her womanising victim the Marquis des Arcis - out to be individuals of a far more complex and fragile nature, both tragically susceptible to the snares and chicanery of amorous infatuation.

In Cécile de France and Édouard Baer, Mouret has two superlative lead performers who are extraordinarily well suited to the roles of the scheming widow and her object of love and loathing.  Their charismatic presence has lifted many a lacklustre film over the past few decades but here, supplied with an intelligently crafted script worthy of their talents, both actors impress as they have rarely done before.  The subtlety of Mouret's writing is matched by the subtlety of their acting and for once the power of the author's mastery of language is felt with the full force of a tsunami.  In a remarkably nuanced performance, de France convinces us that her character's vengeance is the product not of malice but of genuine inner pain, the wound that continues to fester when love has died.  Sympathetic as ever, Baer likewise reveals his character to be no heartless libertine, but a hopelessly brittle man aching for the love that will redeem him and bring meaning to his empty existence.

The delicate disconnection between the words that are uttered and the sentiments they convey teases us constantly, and this is the mechanism by which we gain an insight into the true nature of the protagonists, fragile souls forced to perform as marionettes in the cruellest of puppet shows.  For all his compassion, Mouret spares us none of the emotional upset that the callous intrigue engenders and he persists with his moral with a merciless intent.  In the end we are left in no doubt, that to inflict pain on a fellow creature by manipulating his or her inner feelings is a far nastier form of vengeance than any physical blow that may be inflicted on the body.

To date, writing is the domain in which Emmanuel Mouret has most excelled.  His direction has never lacked inspiration but it has by and large tended to be of a conventional character, sufficient to the task of servicing the script and obtaining the best performances from his cast.  Mademoiselle de Joncquières marks a significant progression in Mouret's development as a filmmaker, with the director using the camera more imaginatively and with greater freedom than he has ever done before.  The sumptuously verdant exteriors and elegantly framed interiors are not only richly evocative of the milieu and era in which the story takes place - enlightenment France, an age free thinking and free love bound by tight social conventions.  They also provide a suitably misleading backdrop, their apparent calm and mathematical orderliness belying the emotional turmoil that is fermenting just beneath the surface.

Just as the calculating Madame de La Pommeraye seeks to deceive her ex-lover with softly spoken words to guide him towards a fitting humiliation, so the film's painterly composition sets out to trick us into thinking that the gentle game of deception and manipulation is far less damaging than it really is.  All may be fair and love and war but the cost of either hardly seems to be worth it - at least that is the impression that Emmanuel Mouret hammers into your heart as you thirstily imbibe his most accomplished film yet.

Film Synopsis

France, in the mid-1700s.  After the death of her husband, Madame de La Pommeraye lives a secluded life at her large country estate.  Although she is still young and beautiful, she has lost her appetite for love - until she encounters the handsome Marquis des Arcis, a notorious libertine who delights in his feminine conquests.  How easily does the young widow succumb to the Marquis's demonic powers of seduction.  For once in her life, she discovers true happiness, but within a few short years she realises that her beau idéal has begun to lose interest in her.

A proud and vengeful woman, Madame de La Pommeraye cannot bear her lover's rejection of her with a noble heart.  Instead, she contrives a cruel scheme which, she is sure, will reward the Marquis's infidelity with a well-deserved humiliation.  The instrument of her revenge will be the delicate Mademoiselle de Joncquières who, like her mother, has fallen on hard times and now leads the life of a high-class prostitute to evade penury.  The Marquis knows nothing of the unfortunate mademoiselle's shady past and is easily won over by her charm and beauty.  His enemy watches in delight as he falls into the carefully laid trap which will surely ruin his life forever...