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Alain Robbe-Grillet: Six Films 1963-1974

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    Ian Jane
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  • Alain Robbe-Grillet: Six Films 1963-1974



    Released by: BFI
    Released on: June 30th, 2014.
    Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
    Cast: Various
    Year: 1963-1974

    The Movies:

    The BFI presents six of filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet's films in one deluxe Blu-ray boxed set. Here's a look…

    The Immortal One:

    The first film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet is an intentionally odd film that follows the exploits of a French professor (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze) in Turkey whose unhappy existence is brightened by an encounter with a stunningly beautiful, albeit very mysterious, woman (Franí§oise Brion). This woman is more than she seems, however, as she may have a connection to a criminal organization involved in a modern day slave trade/prostitution ring. Yet, their relationship goes on for a few days, until eventually she mystifyingly vanishes.

    Understandably the man wants to know what happened to her and so he sets out into the streets of Istanbul to see if he can track her down. Amazingly enough, everyone he talks to about the woman has no recollection of her at all. It's as if she never existed to anyone but him. When fairly suddenly he runs into her again and they're reunited, his happiness is once again cut short by a freak car accident resulting in her untimely death. From here, he psychoanalyzes the events that killed her over and over again in his mind, trying to determine if his own actions caused the accident or not.

    A strange film where we see the budding filmmaker experimenting with narrative structure, and the first half of the film is obtuse to the point where it'll definitely alienate those who require a more linear storytelling style than the one employed here. The audience and the characters alike spend the first half of the movie asking a lot of questions that there aren't any obvious answers to but once the film moves into its second half, the series of flashbacks help to fill in some of the blanks, if not all of them. There's a palpable sense of mystery here and while it's not typical potboiler material, in that it absolutely puts artistic intent and style over substance way ahead of story, there's enough to latch onto if you pay attention and think on things to make this more than a series of striking compositions.

    But what a series of striking compositions they are! As is typical in the cinema of Robbe-Grillet, our leading lady, in this case the stunning Franí§oise Brion, spends a lot of time in slinky black lingerie completely dolled up and absolutely fetishized by the camera. This doesn't serve to further the plot all that much, though she is embroiled in a love affair so its' not completely out of synch with the story, but it does allow the filmmaker to create some impressively sexy shot setups. By doing so, we are, in a sense, seeing her through the male lead's eyes. As he obsesses over her, we're asked to come along for the ride and her sexualized scenarios (light bondage) becomes our voyeuristic eye candy. To the actress' credit, she plays the femme fatale very well, with the right balance of sex appeal and cold, dissonant style. Doniol-Valcroze also handles this material well, his frustration and, yes, obvious confusion about his situation becoming a key part of what makes his character who he is and which propels the skeletal story along in bizarre ways.

    Another noteworthy aspect of the production is the way in which the architectural style of Istanbul is captured in the frame. Strange angles are used constantly throughout the movie to keep us just a little bit off guard, all of which is compounded when the man heads into the city to deal with the locals, none of whom will really show him any warmth of offer him any information or assistance. He is alone save for her, but is she even real in the first place? The city, like the characters that inhabit it and the story that unfolds between its walls, is guileful and the way in which it is shot only accentuates all of this. Is this style over substance? Definitely. But no less worth seeing for it.

    Trans-Europ Express:

    1967's Trans-Europ-Express begins when a film director named Jean (played by Robbe-Grillet himself) joins his producer, Marc (Paul Loyet), and his assistant, Lucette (Catharine Robbe-Grillet), aboard the Trans-Europ-Express. As they take the train ride from Paris bound to Antwerp, they discuss the possibilities for turning a voyage such as this into a feature film surrounding drug smugglers.

    While this conversation, which stretches throughout the entire film, we see an actor, Jean-Louis Trintignant, enter the station. From here we see most of the story play out through his eyes, as he becomes a character named Elias. As it turns out, he's taking the train to Antwerp to retrieve a suitcase full of cocaine that he is in turn supposed to deliver to his mysterious gangster employers. Upon his arrival in Antwerp he makes his connection and hands him his scarf - he's being tested. While this happens, he's watched by a girl in a window. She approaches him afterwards and asks him to buy her a drink. He obliges, she tells him her name is Eva (Marie-France Pisier) and asks if he'd like to go back to her place. When he says he's not interested she asks him what he is interested in. His response? “Rape and only rape.” She tells him that'll cost extra and they head back to her place for what is basically consensual rough sex. But there's more to Eva than just good looks and a penchant for the kinky and the 'truth' about Elias' actual mission in Antwerp will come as a surprise to no one but Elias himself.

    Basically two plots that slowly (but surely) collide towards the finale, Robbe-Grillet's playful directorial style keeps the movie as amusing as it is intriguing. Shot with a careful eye for composition and making great use of shadow and light to provide for plenty of visually interesting contrasts, the film is a treat to look at while the plot twists and turns in fascinating ways. At the center of all of this is a stone faced Trintignant, playing everything with the utmost seriousness and never really breaking character once he 'becomes' Elias. His interactions with the drop dead gorgeous Pisier provide the central relationship in the film, and while it starts off as purely sexual, it morphs into something more bizarre and more obsessive before the inevitable 'FIN' hits the screen at the ninety-six minute mark. Pisier's character is the more playful of the two. At one point he remarks that she's too accustomed to being abused but this doesn't stop him from having fun with her or tying her to a bed and using her for some quick thrills.

    Cinematographer Willy Kurant, who also worked with Goddard, lingers on Pisier a lot, focusing not only on her body but also on her face, accentuating her dark and piercing eyes but lighting her softly and with an emphasis on sensuality. The editing in the scene in which Elias 'rapes' her, in which the train itself is used as an obvious metaphor for their fornication, is a cliché but it's used well here and fits in with the film's obvious, if intentionally bizarre, sense of humor. The finale, which takes place inside a coyly named night club and which features a beautiful woman chained on a rotating platform for the amusement of the male and female patrons alike, is intriguing in its voyeurism but remarkably stylish and visually cool and appealing.

    Well-paced and frequently very unpredictable, the movie is a lot of fun. This must have left theater patrons scratching their heads when it played first run and the BSDM elements would cause some controversy in more conservative territories (it was banned in the UK at one point) but by modern standards it's quite enjoyable. It mixes genres, at once a thriller and a comedy while working in elements of film noir and action movies, but it exploits the 'film within a film' motif very effectively and stands the test of time quite well.

    The Man Who Lies:

    The third feature film written and directed by Robbe-Grillet (and made the year after the success of his classic Trans-Europ Express), 1968's The Man Who Lies once again reunites the director with leading man Jean-Louis Trintignant. Though he's shot in the opening credits sequence that takes place during the Second World War, we soon meet him as Boris, a man who has returned to the small French village where he tells anyone who will listen that he bravely fought in the Resistance. The villagers already have a war hero of their own, however, and that would be Jean Robin (also played by Trintignant), a man who was killed by the Germans during the occupation.

    Nevertheless, Boris makes his way into the stately castle where Jean's father lives and works as a servant. Here he meets three beautiful women: the late soldier's widow, his sister and their housekeeper (Zuzana Kocíºrikoví¡, Sylvie Turboví¡ and Sylvie Bréal). After first seducing the housekeeper, he quickly moves on to conquer the other two women as well. Satiated, he sets about digging up what he can around town, talking up his story and making strange contradictions about what really happened during the war. When a man arrives in town who may actually be the real Jean Robin, the truth about his relationship with Boris and the events that really occurred years before becomes increasingly blurred with what we assume is Boris' fabricated fantasy world.

    Shades of the filmmaker's script for Last Year At Marienbad can be picked up on throughout the movie but here he blends that with the pseudo-surrealism he'd started toying with in Trans-Europ Express, a film that, like this one, is more concerned with the viewer's interpretation of reality than reality itself. Though the mystery behind the story is pretty easy to figure out if you're even half way paying attention, the payoff here is not in the film's attempts at suspense (some of which work better than others) but in its fantastic visuals and thinly veiled sexuality. As it is with much of Robbe-Grillet's work, the film toys with sex games, be it with a woman with a blindfold, fetish outfits or hints at lesbianism. The man's obsession with kink isn't something he really ever tried to hide and if nothing else it makes for some fantastic compositions and interesting, mildly thrilling set pieces.

    Politically speaking the movie would seem to be making some sometimes less than subtle barbs towards France's history, specifically during the era in which the story takes place. There's a strong theme of disloyalty and betrayal running throughout the film and not just in the plot thread concerning the truth behind the Boris/Jean connection. You come away from the picture wondering if anyone it is truly honest and this, again, ties into the readings of the film's politics. While much of the film's scenes of dialogue have an almost improvisational feel to them, you also get the impression that everything that happens in the film and which is uttered by its cast is wholly intentional.

    The female cast members don't have all that much to do except to indulge and by their indulgences further various plot points, such as they are. This leaves the heavy lifting in the capable hands of Jean-Louis Trintignant who had, by this point in time, proven himself a capable and worthy leading man. He handles the dialogue well and brings to the movie a strong sense of confusion, one befitting of his character, his situation and his surroundings. This isn't quite as strong a film as some of the director's other works but for those familiar with and who appreciate Alain Robbe-Grillet's unique style, it's absolutely worth a watch.

    Successive Slidings Of Pleasure:

    1974's Successive Slidings Of Pleasure once again sees the director working with leading man Jean-Louis Trintignant but although he is top billed, his role in the film is more of a supporting effort. Most of the movie focuses on two female roommates, the gorgeous Anicée Alvina (whose character is never named) and her equally gorgeous companion (Olga Georges-Picot). When the movie begins, Alvina is up to something. She takes off Olga's clothes and wraps her in a leather coat before then tying her nude to a bed and painting her naked body. Olga's character seems almost dead, laying there as if in a trance, and sure enough, we soon find out she's been murdered, a pair of scissors sticking out of her torso while her body remains bound to the bed.

    Obviously Alvina is the suspect here and though the murder is never shown, her claims that some random man ran into the apartment and murdered her roommate are dubious at best. A detective (Trintignant) arrives and investigates but he seems more interested in Alvina's lifestyle choices and dietary habits than in actually finding any clues. From here, Alvina is shipped off to a convent where a judge (Michael Lonsdale) interrogates her. She doesn't relent or cave in at all, she sticks to her story but her attempts to use her feminine wiles to distract him don't seem to have much effect - at least not initially, we soon learn he's a peeping Tom with a foot fetish. Things become even more bizarre when Alvina's lawyer (also played by Olga Georges-Picot) shows up and starts to question the women that her client insists are being stripped and tortured in the basement. Of course, what the lawyer learns is different than what Alvina insists is actually going on and before it's all done, the movie has literally pointed its finger at us - who really killed the roommate and why?

    Alain Robbe-Grillet proved he could do playful in Trans-Europ-Express and he continues that trend here, telling his story in a most bizarre way with little regard to linear storytelling and occasional segues into surrealist territory. He definitely ups the ante here over that earlier film in regards to how much female skin is on display and additionally in how graphic he's willing to get in his depictions of fetishized female torture and degradation. At the same time, there's a twisted sense of black humor obviously at work, though it would stand to reason that not everyone in the audience is going to be in on the joke.

    It's hard to tell if the character Alvina plays actually has some sort of psycho-sexual power over those around her or not. As the title not so subtly implies, we do see the people that she comes into contact with steadily give way to the carnal side of their psyche, letting their id takeover where maybe a more reasoned approach to the situations would have been more prudent. There are times where the movie infers she is a witch, that her abilities are supernatural, but ultimately the movie leaves a lot of that up to us to interpret on our own - that is, if we're not too distracted by the bound and the beautiful flaunted about the screen in increasingly tantalizing ways.

    The writer/director toys with us from the start. Alvina's relationship with her roommate isn't a 'normal' relationship and her interactions with Trintignant's investigator continue that, as does her interactions with the judge and then her lawyer. As the movie explores these relationships the titular slidings become more obvious. At the center of all of this is the lovely Alvina, a beautiful dark haired seductress who uses body language as effectively as utterances of dialogue to parlay her character's emotions and state of mind. We see this most prominently in a scene where she pants herself red and uses her body to smear the white walls with what is obviously the color of blood. The movie is heady, it's trippy and it's intentionally bizarre but none of this takes away from its fascinating mix of arthouse surrealism and bawdy sexploitation.

    Eden and After:

    Eden And After is one of the stranger films in the filmmaker's already bizarre filmography. The beginning of the film is centered around the appropriately titled Eden Café, a coffee house that attracts a crowd of art students who seem to appreciate its anti-social sensibilities. A sign hangs on the wall encouraging patrons to 'drink blood' which contrasts with the Coca-Cola symbols painted across the glass windows. Here these students indulge their base desires and play 'games' with names like 'poison' and 'rape.'

    An interruption in their oddly ritualistic playtime occurs when a man known only as The Dutchman (Pierre Zimmer) enters the café intent on teaching them a game that he learned himself during his travels to Africa. First he has a one of the art students pick up deadly sharp shards of broken glass and from there, he proceeds to heal the ensuing wounds. After this he offers 'fear powder' to a beautiful young woman named Violette (Catherine Jourdan). From here, she 'travels' (or at least hallucinates as much) to Tunisia where she becomes involved in some S&M play with The Dutchman and various other Eden Café denizens involved alongside her…

    Demonstrating the bold use of primary color and wild locations that would make his follow up to this film, The Successive Slidings Of Pleasure, so visually arresting, Robbe-Grillet is once again more concerned with atmosphere and imagery than with cohesive storytelling. The plot, which was admittedly and obviously influenced by Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, essentially follows Violette as she tumbles down what we take to be a drug induced rabbit hole where she quite literally meets otherworldly (albeit very human) inhabitants. It's an interesting and completely bizarre take on a story that most of us are already very familiar with, but with Robbe-Grillet putting his own artisanal spin on the proceedings, in many ways it's unlike anything made before or since.

    The story starts off strangely enough, with the art students getting into all manner of debauchery in the café, but it's not until things shift to Tunisia (and the scenes that take place there were shot on location) where things really start to unfold. Catherine Jourdan is quite striking here. She's got a ridiculously strong sex appeal but so too does she carry about her a distinct aura of both nativity and fragility. The camera loves her and she's frequently framed in picture perfect compositions against backdrops of striking colors obviously chosen to compliment her costumes and her natural features. It works and it works well, the narrative structure letting us witness firsthand the 'alien' encounters that take place once she's transported, in all their scintillating detail.

    Ultimately, the film is just as strange as it sounds but it's absolutely worth seeing for fans of Robbe-Grillet's style or French arthouse filmmaking in general. It moves at a reasonably good pace, offering up quite a few memorable set pieces before the film finishes up and a few decent performances as well. It may very well be an exercise in style over substance but when it's as well done and intriguing as it is here, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

    N. Took The Dice:

    While this is essentially a recut version of Eden And After that Robbe-Grillet prepared for broadcast on French television a year after the movie played theatrically, there's more to this than just some of the racier bits being excised for home viewing. Things play out in a different order in this cut than they do in the original version and the flow of the picture and the way in which the story unfolds has a much more traditional, linear feel to it. This version of the movie runs seventy-nine minutes versus the ninety-eight minute version of the uncut film and it's also presented in 1.66.1 AVC encoded 1080p high definition with DTS-HD Mono French language audio and English subtitles.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    All six films in the set are presented two per disc on 50GB Blu-ray's in their original aspect ratio in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. The black and white films look very good on Blu-ray. There are some minor specks and tiny scratches here and there but no seriously distracting print damage. The elements used were obviously in great shape, however, and the healthy bit rate ensures that these early Robbe-Grillet movies look really improves over standard definition offerings. The contrast looks very strong here, though there are a few spots in each of these movies where the original photography lets the whites get a bit hot. Black levels are strong throughout, they border on dark grey in a few spots but those are the exception and not the rule. Detail is vastly improved from previous standard definition presentations as is texture. The images are consistently sharp and show good shadow detail in the darker scenes as well. There are no issues with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or noise reduction at all. These are very solid, film-like pictures that leave little to complain about.

    The color films also look great. Detail is excellent in close up shots and remains strong in medium and long distance shots as well. Color reproduction is very good in each film, the way in which the director uses reds and primaries really strikes you. Skin tones look perfect, they're nice and natural and never too hot and there's no evidence of noise reduction anywhere to be seen. Grain is very obvious throughout all of the movie but never to the point where it distracts and while a few minor specks pop up here and there, there isn't any serious print damage to complain about. Texture is strong, black levels are nice and deep and all in all the movies look great on Blu-ray. Image quality here is pretty comparable to the domestic Blu-ray releases, and that's just fine as they looked quite good.

    The only audio option for each of the six features is a French language LPCM Mono track with optional subtitles provided in English only. Generally speaking these are good mixes, if sometimes a bit thin. There's a little bit of hiss here and there but it's not all that distracting unless you're overly susceptible to such things, and most won't likely even notice it. The dialogue is generally very clean and clear and there are no issues with the levels, which are properly balanced throughout each of the six movies. The scores sound quite good, they have a lot more depth than you might expect and they turn out to be very effective pieces of work that enhances their respective films a lot. The English subtitles are easy to read and free of any typographical errors. Again, the audio quality is comparable to that heard on the domestic releases.

    The main extras in this set are the exclusive audio commentaries for each film (save for N. Took The Dice) by Tim Lucas in which he offers up his thoughts on the pictures. A welcome mix of critical analysis, trivia and historical information he discusses the influences prevalent throughout the director's work and explores many of the themes that Robbe-Grillet returns to with many of these films. He also provides lots of welcome background information on the cast and crew, makes some interesting observations about different compositions seen on the screen and heard in the music and also shares some biographical information about the cast and locations employed. These are well paced and quite interesting to listen to.

    Each film (again, save for N. Took The Dice) also gets a video introduction by Catherine Robbe-Grillet, the director's widow who worked with him quite closely throughout his career. These are interesting enough but more substantial are the six filmed interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet in which he is interviewed by Frederic Taddei. These also appeared on the US Kino/Redemption releases and they are interesting and thorough as Taddei is savvy enough to ask the director all the right questions and simply let him explain his intent and share his stories.

    We also get theatrical trailers for Trans-Europ Express, The Man Who Lies and Eden And After, still menus and chapter selection. The discs come with an illustrated booklet with extended essay by David Taylor, and full film credits for each film and for the Blu-ray as well as a set of postcards reproducing some vintage promotional art for the movies.

    The Final Word:

    The BFI's release of Alain Robbe-Grillet: Six Films 1963-1974 offers up six of the director's finest moments in excellent shape and with some nice extra features as well. The movies won't be for all tastes but anyone with a taste for surrealism, arthouse and erotic would do well to check them out and this collection is an excellent way to do just that.

    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!


    The Immortal One:











    Trans-Europ Express:











    The Man Who Lies:











    Successive Slidings Of Pleasure:











    Eden And After:











    N. Took The Dice:










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