Madame Claude/Mademoiselle de Joncquières (Lady j) - review

In the next installment on my pointless reviews of (mostly) French content on (mostly) Netflix that nobody reads, I will take a look at two films I watched last night. 

Both are period dramas (though it grieves me to say that some of the events depicted in the first one happened during my lifetime!) and both are tales of morality with women at the heart of them. Here the similarities stop. 

The first film has just been released: Madame Claude is based on the real life story of a woman (real name Fernande Grudet, played by Karole Rocher) who organised a network of 300 high-class call-girls with access to the elite in the 1960s and 70s. She gave a hand to the French secret services until the establishment finally turned against her. Hers is a well-known name in France, due mostly to the sulfurous nature of the whole thing (mixing sex, power and money, with a soupçon of murder and spying), her high-profile trial in the 90s, and the thrilling existence of notebooks listing her clients. 

The film includes some archival footage and audio. Unfortunately, at almost two hours, Madame Claude somehow fails to tell us much more about its heroine and what happened to her. The films seems to stick to ourlining events without ever getting into them. Grudet is presented as damaged, cold, heartless, temperamental, certainly mercurial, and Rocher's delivery, which is often wooden and unnatural, doesn't help. 

The pace of the film is slow and ponderous, an impression re-enforced by the long "artistic" shots of bodies that unhelpfully smother the narrative, in the tradition of 70s soft porn. Another old-fashioned narrative device used here is the inclusion of a voice over, as if Madame Claude herself was telling us her story, though there no reason or context is given for why that would be the case. 

A film on such a subject matter should have been thrilling and totally engrossing. It left me rather cold and pondering why the producers decided to go through the trouble of making it.

Released in 2018, Mademoiselle de Joncquières (AKA Lady j) is loosely based on a story by 18th century French philosopher and encyclopedist Denis Diderot (Disclaimer: He was born about 20Km from where I grew up). 

Although reminiscent of Laclos' Liaisons Dangereuses, this story of virtue outraged and tables turned for the #MeToo generation focuses on its female characters, even if the eponymous mademoiselle is oddly only secondary and virtually mute. There is really only one male character, the philandering marquis des Arcis, who is played by anachronistically scruffy and bearded Édouard Baer. 

Despite the low-budget feel of the film, this is an entertaining period drama; much more successful than the lusher-looking Madame Claude. As the characters' sympathies ebb and flow, so our allegiances shift as the story progresses to a rather satisfying bitter-sweet ending. 

There is also much to unpack from what is, underneath its apparent simplicity, a complex and layered narrative, covering much ground, from patriarchy to power. Although essentially about raw feelings, its intellectual and philosophical pedigree shines through and is what ultimately appealed to my French mind. 

That and the lovely incidental baroque music, as well as Madame de La Pommeraye's super-bright yellow dress! (not the dull one in the pic)