From the City to the Countryside: The Cinema of Yannick Bellon (Part 2 of two)
Bellon covered different territory as her work in fiction films continued into the Eighties and early Nineties.
Bellon tackled another serious problem that affects many women in Naked Love (L’amour nu, 1981), namely breast cancer. The film is as serious as her first four features, but here we watch the lead character distinctly lose her mind as she tries to deal with her diagnosis.
Marlène Jobert (We Won’t Grow Old Together; better known these days as Eva Green’s mom) stars as Claire, a translator/teacher who begins a new relationship with an oceanologist, Simon (Jean-Michel Folon), a quiet and mellow gent. Claire receives a diagnosis of breast cancer while Simon is off on a trip; she then begins radiation therapy for the cancer.
The diagnosis begins to wear on her, and she starts to act out in public. She breaks down at a cocktail party run by a friend and tells the assembled about her cancer. She also begins to stare at other women’s breasts (clothed) and begins to remember the adolescent discovery that her breasts were growing. In the meantime, Simon keeps affectionately sending her audio cassettes of whale sounds.
When Simon returns from his travels, she breaks up with him, without revealing her diagnosis. He is puzzled, until a friend of his (who has met Claire before) notes that he saw Claire in the same cancer ward that he has been getting his treatment at. Simon wants desperately to comfort her, but his daughter tells him, “She doesn’t want your pity.”
The end of the film finds Claire in the hospital where she is going to have an operation (which she had cynically called a “mutilation” to her doctor earlier). Simon tries to see her but is asked to leave her hospital room. At the end she is seen in a hospital bed wearing a bracelet he found for her on his travels and listening to a cassette that he had left for her while she was sleeping.
Again, Bellon moves into a sad and traumatic area in an extremely realistic fashion. There is no documentary aspect here (meaning the “lonely city” shots mentioned in the first part of this piece) to the camerawork or to content, but Claire is a fully-rounded character who is naturally sympathetic and yet also has a quick temper and is wanting to hide her condition as best she can (until her nerves crack and she announces the news to various people).
The conclusion once again brings the “happy pessimism” to the forefront — we’re not certain if Claire will overcome her cancer, but her relationship with Simon seemingly is now back on, and she’s also taking the initiative in her self-care by choosing to have the operation.
L’amour nu represents the end of a certain cycle in Bellon’s work, where she focused on female protagonists and the obstacles that confront them. It contains a great lead performance by Jobert and also has a “guest star” cameo, with the wonderfully talented scripter Jean-Claude Carrière (who I wrote a Deceased Artiste tribute to here) playing a doctor she goes to in order to get a second opinion about the operation.
*****
Bellon’s The Cheat (aka La Triche, 1984) is the first time Bellon placed a male at the center of a fiction feature. The film has its roots in her previous character studies, but it is also a thriller of sorts. The film takes a while to get going, but once it does it’s quite good.
First off: an odd joke credit for the production company, which is named “Anus Films” styled like Janus Films. (This will never get a Criterion release.) A very uncharacteristic joke for a Bellon movie, although if you’re going to have a wink-and-a-nod gag like that in a dead serious film like this, the best place to put it is at the beginning.
The film depicts one part of the gay lifestyle before AIDS appeared on the scene. In the city of Bordeaux, police chief Verta (Victor Lanoux) is leading a double life. He is both a family man and a frequenter of gay establishments where he cruises the men he sees. The film opens with him waking up from a one-night stand, trying to get rid of the gent he picked up the night before — Verta needs to get to work on time and his family is coming home that day.
Veteran character actor Michel Galabru plays two brothers: the first is the initial murder victim whose case Verta is investigating near the beginning of the film; the second is the murder victim’s brother, who wants justice for his sibling. The murder victim was performing at a nightclub that has drag performers. (The one whose act is seen at length does an impression of French pop icon Dalida.) Verta is best suited for this investigation as he frequents the nightclub.
While questioning employees about the murder victim’s habits, he flirts with the club’s young bassist, Bernard (Xavier Deluc), and the two go back to the bassist’s “apartment” (actually a metal barn converted into living quarters). Verta starts to take big chances, having dates with Bernard in public places and even inviting him to his family apartment.
For a while the film loses its crime-movie overlay and simply becomes a study of Verta leading a double life, which ends when Verta uses his brother-in-law’s spare room for a meeting with Bernard, and Verta’s sister-in-law ends up telling his wife, Nathalie (Anny Duperey), about his relationship with Bernard.
One of the film’s best scenes finds Verta’s wife trying to convince Bernard that he should stop seeing her husband. The young man doesn’t take her seriously and dismisses her after hearing her plea. In the meantime, Verta has indeed come out as bisexual to her, saying that his flings with men aren’t as important as his family; Nathalie doesn’t believe him.
The film moves back into thriller territory when Bernard is beaten by a trio of toughs hired by the man who committed the initial murder. The murderer, it turns out, spends time at the nightclub and just happens to be straight and incredibly homophobic; he and Bernard get into an argument at the nightclub one evening and then he follows Bernard home, trying to blackmail him over the affair with Verta.
Bernard kills the murderer and then meets with Verta, who gives him money to leave town. Verta tells his wife about this latest wrinkle and suggests that she leave town as well. The film then moves to a sudden, unexpected conclusion.
Bellon clearly wanted to make a break from the kinds of character studies she’d been making up to this time. The result is a film that has men at its center (although Nathalie does get a few moments in the spotlight) and is a fairly decent crime picture in the process.
As noted above, though, what becomes most intriguing about the film is that it depicts a way of life that ended shortly thereafter when AIDS hit the gay community. In this regard, The Cheat works as a character study and a thriller that now can be viewed as a time capsule of the early Eighties.
*****
The next entry in Bellon’s filmography is a full-length documentary (69 mins) that she made in preparation for her next fiction film. This film, titled Escape (aka Évasion, 1989), which isn’t even listed on Bellon’s IMBD filmo, is a portrait of a theater group, the Théâtre du Fil. The group is made up of “youths at risk” (read: juvenile delinquents) who have served time in prison and are going through a rehabilitation process that finds them acting as part of the troupe to get away from crime, drugs, prostitution, and their troubled family lives.
This was the only feature shown in the festival in which we see Bellon herself. A woman “of a certain age” when this documentary was made (she was 64), she interviews the young people in the theater group, asking about the experiences that led them to their time in prison. In between the interview sequences we see them playing theater games (one is called “Meeting St. Peter”) and performing for children in poor neighborhoods. We also learn that the social workers handling their cases are directly involved in the theater group and even act in some of the productions.
Bellon spends the most time talking to two young women, Mona and Danièle, whose experiences informed the lead character’s actions in her next film. (She tells the interview subjects that she is about to do the fiction film in question.) Mona talks about her problems with drugs and prostitution and how she gave birth while in prison. In the course of the film, one member of the troupe falls back into drugs and theft. The conclusion finds the troupe performing a play about prison life for women prisoners.
Escape provides an interesting glimpse at the kind of research that Bellon put into her fiction films. It also clearly lays out the characters that inhabit the next film, as well as the look of the piece.
*****
Escape served as documentary research for the fiction film Children of Chaos (aka Les enfants du désordre, 1989). Giving an excellent role to Emmanuelle Béart, Children found Bellon returning to her “lonely women” mode, albeit with a younger character.
Béart plays Marie, a young woman who is moved from prison to reform school. There she becomes part of a theater troupe that consists of troubled young people who are trying to leave crime and drugs behind. Marie herself is an addict who constantly feels the need for a fix. Her young daughter is in the care of her parents, as Marie is not considered responsible enough to care for her. Her mother views her new passion as a lark. (“Theater isn’t work,” she tells Marie.)
Marie is visited by her old boyfriend, who brings her a fix and shoots up with her. In the meantime, she is disturbed by a fellow student getting arrested and her male friend Pierre (Pierre Bergez) attempting suicide. One of the boys in the troupe tries to rape Marie, but she fights him off. The film’s emotional peak is a sequence in which she acts in a rehearsal with a child in her arms (not her daughter).
Marie maintains a bumpy relationship with the director of the play being rehearsed. She continues to stand up for herself, defying a direction to grope a fellow actor (who is the guy who tried to rape her). She continues to relapse and pays for the drugs by prostituting herself (which Pierre witnesses).
She has a happy moment, the happiest in the film, when she goes with Pierre and her daughter to the beach. What she doesn’t know is that Pierre stole the car he’s driving; he ends up being arrested. She is questioned about the theft and has a breakdown. She destroys her room at the reform school and goes to Paris. We see her in a shooting gallery, having a fix on a staircase.
Marie’s plummet downward is followed by a hopeful ending in which she returns to the rehearsals, telling the director, “Let me do it.” The film most definitely was conceived of as a showcase for the lead actress, and Béart is quite good as Marie. (At this point the actress had already starred in the arthouse hit Manon of the Spring and the dippy American movie Date with an Angel; the exquisite La Belle Noiseuse by Rivette was two years away.)
The script, written by Bellon with her sister Loleh, the actor Gérard Sergue, and Rémi Waterhouse, draws upon the stories of the girls Yannick had interviewed in Escape, but there is also a heavy strain of emotion that comes from the drug addict plot thread as well as Marie’s dogged nature, not allowing the men in her life to diminish her, whether they mean well (the director) or ill (her ex-boyfriend and the would-be rapist).
*****
Bellon’s last fiction feature is unfortunately her weakest and most sentimental. Her only film shot in a widescreen process, The Lookout (aka L’Affût, 1992) is a very pretty-looking picture that was shot in the Eastern French region of Dombes. Tchéky Karyo plays Jean, an ornithologist tagging rare birds and trying to defy the local hunters by keeping the local fowl safe.
Jean also teaches at the local school while he is visiting a small town for research purposes (and to hopefully create a preserve in the area). He becomes friends with a local boy and then has a relationship with the boy’s mother, Isabelle (Dominique Blanc), who is a local who left town and has returned. She is the subject of much gossip, as she has a past history as a drug addict and an actress in porn. For his part, Jean is an alcoholic but is on the wagon.
In one of the film’s plot contrivances, Isabelle’s brother Franck (Carlo Brandt) has been making money by selling taxidermic animals, which belong to endangered species. Word gets out that he is doing this and he is arrested. Meanwhile, Isabelle breaks up with Jean, causing him to break his sobriety and get drunk.
But… the little boy (him again!) gets caught by a trap in the woods and, since Jean knows the territory well, he is the likely person to find the child. He does, and there’s a completely happy ending, with nary a trace of pessimism to be seen. (For those who didn’t read the first part of this article, the festival at L’Alliance in NYC was called “Yannick Bellon: The Happy Pessimist,” after a quote from Bellon about her disposition.)
The film reflects Bellon’s sincere interest in environmentalism and the saving of rare species, but as a dramatic tale, it is too predictable and all too familiar. The only scenes that are similar to Bellon’s other work are those that involve the revelation of Isabelle’s past — she certainly seems like a slightly older version of Marie from Children of Chaos. Otherwise, The Lookout could’ve been made by any number of other filmmakers.
*****
As a bonus, a few of Bellon’s short films were included in one program during the festival of her films at L’Alliance in Manhattan. These were great examples of Bellon’s work before she turned to making fiction features.
“Zaa, The Little White Camel” (aka Zaa, petit chameau blanc, 1960) is a live-action children’s film about a 10-year-old in Tunisia who befriends a camel. One day a camel merchant buys the boy’s friend, and the boy runs away to find him. He travels on the train to different places and ends up reunited with the camel, thanks to the intercession of a little girl he meets in a distant town.
Narrated by François Périer (Orpheus, Le Samourai), the film is a pleasant, beautifully shot kiddie movie that shows Bellon experimenting with telling a tale of a traveling protagonist and using a beautiful color palette to keep both child and adult viewers watching.
“Anatomy of Los Angeles” (1969) was a made-for-French-TV study of the city of L.A. with only a brief bit at the beginning (with a stray shot of Natalie Wood) concerning Hollywood. Bellon documents a protest on the campus of UCLA and visits a Black neighborhood, getting a tour from a local couple. Among the celebrity talking heads in the film are French author Michel Butor and Henry Miller, speaking fluent French with a very thick Brooklyn accent — and mocking the hell out of L.A.
“City by the Sea, or How to Survive in Venice” (1969) is another short television doc, this one covering the aftermath of a devastating flood that hit Venice in 1966. We see decay in art and in sculptures, and marble on the verge of crumbling. (Plus, for added angst, air pollution!) The oddest thing about this short film is that there is a tacked-on segment that looks to have been imposed by the TV producer, which finds a very dull expert speaking about the condition of the city.
*****
One hopes that Bellon’s fiction features (especially the first five) will get an official release on Blu-ray in the U.S. in the near future. Her work has all been recently restored, and there were two different DVD boxes released in France collecting different amounts of the films. One released in 2005 contained all eight of the fiction features and six shorts, and another in 2019 had the eight fiction features, plus a film essay Bellon made about her life in 2018 titled Where Does This Distant Air Come From? Chronicle of a Life in Cinema — which I would love to see — and nine shorts, both fiction and documentary.
Currently, one can only see Jamais Plus Toujours with English subtitles “above ground” on the Internet (here on YouTube). I recommend Jamais heartily, as it remains my favorite of all her films. There really needs, though, to be a box set of the fiction films to show that there was indeed one woman filmmaker who was making intense character studies that qualified as her own “maverick cinema” in the Seventies and Eighties.