Mississippi Mermaid
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Movie Reviews of Mississippi Mermaid
Movie Review: La Belle de Soir
Summary: 4 Stars
If on one hand, "La Sirène du Mississipi" is not Truffaut's best, on the other, it is much better than many films we see nowadays -- say, the quasi-remake of this, called "Original Sin", starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas. Both films are based on Willian Irish's --or, if you will, Cornell Woolrich's -- "Waltz into Darkness". But the similarities end here. While Truffaut is an exercise of style and good taste, the other, directed by Michael Cristofer, is so meaningless that is almost vulgar. The plot is very simple, but at the same time catching. A man from Reunion Island orders a mail bride. When he meets her, she turns up to be more beautiful and dangerous than described in the letters and shown in the photos. He imedeately falls for her, and apparently so does she. We, and so does he, learn that she is not really what she meant to be. The film has some fine and exciting twists that keep you wondering what would come next.
Catherine Deneuve plays the femme fatale. She comes fresh from Buñuel's "La Belle du Jour", where she has already exercised and improved her glacial blonde side. Here, she goes a bit further, including a bit more of dissimulantion. Not only is she beautiful, but also, very effective as the woman who can dissimulate love. Jean Paul Belmondo plays a very different character from those he had been cast for. He is a bit silly and weak. So the whole relationship is dominated by her, once she is very strong and persuasive. One clear example of this is when they are buying a car. He is sure he wants the silver one, that would be more discreet, but she wants the red one... guess which one they buy! So, don't be fooled, this is a Catherine Deneuve's show. She is dazzingly in her Yves Saint-Laurent. She dominates the frames in every scene she is in! And even some she is out.
Another thing, many people may not understand the difference between "tu" and "vous" in this film. It is not a mistake! The writer meant to show different periods in their relationship. When they are close --things are fine-- they use `tu', but sometimes they use `vous', particulary, after spending a time apart-- this means how distant from each other --as a strange -- they became.
Truffaut's work is as always very effective and very creative. In the very beginning he does an homage to Jean Renoir, using some footage of his "La Marseillase" introducing Reunion Island. Although this film is meant to be a thriller, in the end, it is much more a love story. A tragic love story of a love that probably shouldn't have happened. We also have to notice how hidden and subtle the sexuality is, in this movie -- as in most of Truffaut's woks. Some of his films may be virtually sexless, but if you watch it very close, you will see sparkles of love everywhere.
As a devoted fan of François Truffaut, every film he made, interests me. This "Mississipi Mermaid" makes no exeception. It is intriguing, interesting and disturbing. "Love hurts?", somebody asks in the film. "Yes, it does, when I look at you, you are so beautiful that hurts me. [...] it is a joy and a suffering". As most of his movies: they are a joy, but they also hurt us, once they show how human nature and love can be.
Movie Review: Truffaut's Venture into Noir
Summary: 4 Stars
"Mississippi Mermaid" (1969), is a French film, written and directed by famed director Francois Truffaut( Francois Truffaut's Adventures of Antoine Doinel (The 400 Blows / Antoine & Collette / Stolen Kisses / Bed & Board / Love on the Run) - Criterion Collection). It is an odd little noir melodrama, a crime/drama/romance, said to have been influenced by the famous British-American film director Alfred Hitchcock, that has the privilege of presenting two of the greatest stars of contemporary French cinema, Jean Paul Belmondo (Breathless - Criterion Collection) and Catherine Deneuve(The Umbrellas of Cherbourg; Belle de Jour) in its leading roles. It is based on the novel Waltz into Darkness (Crime, Penguin) by well-known American mystery/thriller author Cornell Woolrich, writing as William Irish, and was dedicated to famed French film director Jean Renoir. It's not considered one of Truffaut's greatest pictures, but it has its moments.
The picture is set in the little-known French island of Reunion, near Madagascar, off Africa. Belmondo, who looks very uncomfortable in suit and tie, plays Louis Mahe, a sweet but slightly naïve, successful businessman who owns tobacco fields and a cigar factory. He is awaiting, when the picture opens, Julie Roussel as a mail order bride, whom he knows only from her letters. When she arrives, aboard the ship "Mississippi Mermaid," she arrives in the person of the stunning Deneuve, and is much more beautiful, and quite different, than he expected. His life thereafter will take quite a few unexpected turns, most of them for the worst.
"Mississippi Mermaid" gives us perhaps the best look we will ever get at the island of Reunion. We also get to see some of southern France, the Riviera, Paris, and snowbound Switzerland. It is a treat to look at the two stars in their gorgeous young primes, and their acting, as well as that of the rest of the cast, is quite acceptable. Deneuve was less cold, and more sexy, certainly more skanky, than her usual persona. Belmondo, once freed of his earlier Reunion-bound persona, is able to loosen up and inhabit the emotions his character develops, as the pair develop a reality-based relationship. Not the greatest French movie by a long shot, more a footnote curiosity, but worth seeing for fans of director or stars.
Movie Review: Darkest Deneuve
Summary: 4 Stars
I have not seen the DVD. I saw the classic Mermaid on its initial run in the theatres, and the impression continues to haunt me 30 years later. I attribute the impact almost entirely to Mlle Deneuve's diabolical portrait of an utterly lost soul. Of her massive cannon of femme noir performances (spanning nearly half a century), her brilliant, ongoing exhibition of the dark side of the "eternal feminine", none is quite as disturbing, as that of the icily vapid Julie, the heartless, mindless, psychotic and inevitably homocidal/suicidal 'substitute' mail order bride.In the Mermaid, which followed Belle de Jour and Repulsion in forming the foundation of Deneuve's introduction to an international audience (she'd been making films in France since the tender age of 13), Deneuve's character approaches the sub-human, becomming a sort of cosmic "black-hole" into which her victims (male) are helplessly drawn in a haze romantic self-asserting ignorance, an archeology of a long-lost maenidic fury, or prehensile feminist epistemology, which, under the mature Truffaut's direction and Deneuve's characteristic restraint is played out in grave measures, a ponderous, agonizing, inexorable procession through a slough of despair to dissolution. If Mlle Deneuve et al. have succeeded in creating a character "rotton to her xx chromosone core", they have imparted something crucial about our humanity or lack thereof. For this reason, I rate the Mermaid not as merely good, but great, albeit uncomfortably great, which is perhaps why, it has always been consigned by critics to that dubious category of "flawed masterpieces". But it's worth the price, if for nothing more than to see Deneuve as a flaming redhead.
Movie Review: A Dark and Obsessive Love Story...
Summary: 4 Stars
Begining rather unobtrusively, Louis (Belmondo) and Julie (Deneuve) meet for the first time after falling in love through the mail. It appears a rather normal French love tale, but soon Julie begins to show signs that there is more than meets the eye with her. When she disappears one day, he discovers several things about her. He travels from his island off the coast of Africa to France to find her and falls ill on the journey. He finds her soon after and they begin again as if nothing happened. Louis falls effortlessly into her dark world, doing acts he would never have even thought about committing and soon they are on the run.
Truffaut shows us that under the right, or wrong circumstances any of us would do for the love of our life(especially if she is Catherine Deneuve). The thing I really loved about the film is Truffaut's subtle way of conveying the emotions of the charcters. When their love is going well it's bright and cheery, lots of yellows and sunshine, when it is going awry the colors are dark and the shadows are everywhere.
This is a unique film about love and redemption. Both Deneuve and Belmondo give wonderful performances in a classic piece of noire from the genuis that was Francios Truffaut.
Movie Review: Two Of the Sexiest People To Ever Grace the Planet
Summary: 4 Stars
It is hard for me to imagine a more gorgeous couple than Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo. He was also the lead in the marvelously sexy "Breathless." The strange thing is that two people so physically right for one another should have so much trouble staying together! Deneuve kills Belmondo's mail-order bride so she can take her place and marry him for his fortune. Belmondo's character is almost too naive but he is in love so we'll stretch a bit. When this femme fatale takes off with his money, he pursues and finds her. There is one setup after another with the two of them and they are forever doomed to come together, come apart. This was Francois Truffaut's movie and I never met a movie of his I couldn't like. This one is no exception. Even though it is not his very best at the very peak of his powers, it is certainly very good and a good evening's entertainment for you.