Two moments, in this movie, particularly stick in my mind. The
first is the butcher’s first lines in the movie, referring to a fillet of beef : “I slaughtered
it myself, and if it’s no good I’ll cut my tongue out.” The second involves a
very meaningful regard to camera, which must be one of the most powerful
instances of a screenplay breaking the fourth wall. Presumably the aim of both,
for it certainly is the result, is to unsettle the viewer. In respect of the first
instance, the potential for shock is muted because none of the people within earshot of the butcher
seen to find anything unusual in his language. Perhaps this is because, as we
learn later, the butcher, a war veteran, seems slightly traumatised by the
experience of war, and makes frequent and unashamedly graphic reference, even in the course of apparently
mundane exchanges with his customers, to the horrors he has witnessed. He's outspoken on other matters also. There
are no such caveats with the second instance, though, making
the scene one of the movie’s defining moments.
There is more to this movie than these two moments, of
course. Dedicated to the populace of France’s Perigord region, each
scene is photographed with beautiful clarity, and from time to time we sense elements
of composition in the camerawork. We see this in the presentation of the wedding
dinner, for example, and the establishing shots of the regional landscape.
There is what people do and what people say, and this is brought out visually. We
know that Popaul (the butcher) will broach the subject of relationships with Mademoiselle Helene
because we are shown how he looks at her, without her knowing, with an
admiring eye. In this attraction, and Mademoiselle Helene's attitude to it, lies the crux of this
apparently functional, but tragically dysfunctional, relationship between the
two. It's not unreasonable to suppose that we are
being asked to allow that very bad things can happen when nature isn’t allowed
to take it’s course. After all, “man must have his mate” ,
as the song says. Such an attitude is surely anachronistic, like the taboo referred
to in the script on women smoking cigarettes in the street, and is most likely
not the intention of the filmmakers for that reason. By the same token, it's not very likely that
filmmakers with this much apparent skill could be so trammelled in
their outlook, because surely we must allow scope for the existence of all
sorts of people in a way that doesn’t promulgate outbreaks of serious
antisocial transgressions. Whatever their intention, the filmmakers have crafted
a stylised movie that makes for a good cinematic experience.
archive h☼me