Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva (1981)

Jean-Jacques Beineix's first feature, Diva, is seen by many critics as one of the first – if not the first – films of the Cinéma du look, of outsiders in Mitterrand's France, alternative cultures often seen in such films in the underground, and there's a notable chase sequence in the métro here. Raphael Bassan, in La Revue De Cinéma (1989), originally coined the term.

And the Cinéma du look has often been used to describe films that have more style than content, although Phil Powrie, in his book Jean-Jacques Beineix (2001), argues from a theoretical standpoint of Melanie Klein rather than Freud, that this is a mistaken position to take, and that Diva is very strong in content: interestingly, often, there's more interest in French cinema from English or Americans than Francophones, but then I suppose it's a question of sheer number coupled with the Anglophone world's fascination with French cinema.

I won't waste time talking about the plot, and this is in a sense a policier with a difference, but it was the first appearance for Dominique Pinon (as Le Curé), although Richard Bohringer (here as Gorodish, a kind of father figure to Jules (Frédéric Andréi)) had made a few minor cinematic appearances before.

I've only seen this twice, once completely ignorant, but I strongly suspect that this is a far more important movie than many have given it credit for.

Jean-Jacques Beineix's Le Chien de Monsieur Michel (1977)

Jean-Jacques Beineix made this humorous fifteen-minute film, his first, four years before his next, which is his first feature Diva. Monsieur Michel (Yves Afonso) tells the local butcher (Jean-Pierre Sentier) that he needs some scraps for his dog, and the butcher obliges. But then Michel fries them for himself: he doesn't have a dog. And so this continues, although his neighbours are suspicious as they've never seen a dog, so to rectify this he makes frequent barking noises.

But he makes a mistake by leaving 'paw prints' on the communal stairs which infuriate the neighbours. Later he says he'd had to have the dog put down, but they club together to buy him an Alsatian, although the dog doesn't take too kindly to sharing his food. This received first prize in the 1978 Festival de Trouville, and was nominated for a César for best short.

Jean-Jacques Beineix's La Lune dans le caniveau | The Moon in the Gutter (1983)

As this was available for viewing and Beineix died just ten days ago, I thought it appropriate to watch this, which I discover is one of only six non-documentary feaures that he made. It certainly does have much of the cinéma du look about it, although I'm not sure about the 'triumph of style over content' slur that people used to make: this is addictively watchable, and not just because of the presence of the main stars.

The sister of Gérard Delmas (Gérard Depardieu) has been raped and kills herself as a result, and Gérard determines to find out who did it. Gérard is a docker living in a slum with his father and his partner Bella (Victoria Abril), although as he's on his search Loretta (Nastassja Kinski) rolls up in her flash sports car and takes a distinct liking to him: it's probably the macho working-class difference which appeals to this rich young woman, but Gérard only seems to have a passing interest. His main interest is tracing the killer of his sister Catherine.

The whole atmosphere of the film is bathed is dreams or nightmares, but although Gérard survives Bella's hitmen employed to kill him when he decides to leave and she thinks he's being unfaithful to her, by the end of the film he's still no closer to finding the murderer.

Jean-Jacques Beineix's Roselyne et les lions | Roselyne and the Lions (1989)

 

This is certainly not a film I would normally watch because it contains what I would call cruelty to animals – namely the taming of lions in a circus. However, the little I do have to say about it essentially relates to Jean-Jaques Beineix's cinema, particularly to my previous post on 37°2 le matin.

Roselyne et les lions (with a literal translation Roselyne and the Lions in English) stars Roselyne (Isabelle Pasco) and Thierry (Gérard Sandoz). Thierry loses interest in school once he discovers a zoo nearby which has lion-taming acts: the immediate relation between the untamed force of Betty in the previous film Beineix made is quite clear.

And although this film (rather obscure and little known even in France) isn't normally included in 'le cinéma du look' movies, it contains several elements normally associated with that group: the film comes within the same timeframe; the images are all-important, taking precedence over the content; the couple become drifters, and even though they become successful it is not in their nature to tie themselves to any contract at all, they are free spirits following their dream outside of any conventional structure, and in fact share the same somewhat rebellious nature as other characters in the sub-genre.

Their one guiding principle, mentioned twice, is that the quickest link from one point to another is by a dream. Roselyne and Thierry live that dream and do not allow anyone else to stand in the way of it.

Jean-Jacques Beineix's 37°2 le matin | Betty Blue (1986; Director's cut 1991)

 

37° 2 le matin, the title of Jean-Jacque Beineix's remarkable film adapted from Philip Djian's eponymous novel, alludes to a pregnant woman's temperature, although the lead actor Betty (Beatrice Dalle's first performance) only thinks she's pregnant, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. The English title is a prosaic Betty Blue, and OK the first name is right and there are masses of blue in the film, but all the same...

Betty's partner is Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade), and they're's drifters, marginals, just like many characters in this only highly visual example of what many critics consider to be 'le cinéma du look', an expression that Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma (May 1989) dubbed, and which critic Guy Austin has called 'style over substance, spectacle over narrative' in Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction (1999). Roger Ebert found the behaviour of the characters 'senseless and boring', and mentions old 'dirty' French films. Wow, how wrong he was.

Betty has joined Zorg at Guisson-Plage near Narbonne, where Zorg has found a casual job painting the stilted houses pink and blue. Betty sort of helps him. (They later move to Paris and Marvejevols in Lozère, although what happens in the first part sums up most of Betty's behaviour).

Most reviews describe Betty becoming increasingly crazy, which can't be denied although she's an amazing (if tragic) force of nature: she acts on impulse and does things that are totally unacceptable: to keep to the first part of the film, she throws a pot of paint at Zorg's boss's car, shows the same man her public hair when he's behaved sexually inappropriately, and in the end throws a paraffin lamp into their temporary home after throwing their possessions onto the ground.

The very first scene shows pure sexual pleasure of the two making love, the scene culminating in a noisy orgasm on Betty's part. As you'd expect: she's pure id, and as she has no internal parental or policing force as a controlling superego, Zorg having great difficulty trying to tame her.

Initially, when she finds out Zorg has written a novel, she types it out (using one finger) and sends it off the various publishers, convinced he's a great writer, although Zorg hides insulting rejection slips from her. 

Towards the end she is recovering in a psychiatric hospital, strapped to her bed after poking an eye out: she never recovered from finding out she wasn't pregnant after all. The devastated Zorg feels he can only end her undoutedly future misery by smothering her to death. The version I watched on this second viewing was the director's cut, extending a two-hour film by one hour. Contrary to the late Robert Ebert, I wasn't bored for a second.