420 - Mississippi Mermaid, France, 1969. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

420 - Mississippi Mermaid, France, 1969.  Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Some people just seem to be meant for each other.

Have you ever known a couple that seemed to be a mismatch in the eyes of everyone but themselves?

Love can be challenging sometimes.  Human beings are imperfect.  They let you down.  But when you love a person, you commit to him or her no matter what.  And you are willing to overlook the flaws.  After all, you have flaws too.

But is there such a thing as too many flaws?  Or flaws of too great a degree?  When your partner crosses a line?  Goes a little too far?  To the point that loving him or her is hurting you?  Or even dangerous to your well being?

Let us consider the relationship between Louis Mahe and Julie Roussel and see what we can learn from them.

Louis Mahe owns a cigarette factory, indeed, a tobacco plantation, on the island of Reunion.  Off the coast of Africa.  Near Madagascar.  It is a French region, and its citizens are French.

Louis Mahe has 28 million francs in the bank in his personal account.  Not counting his business accounts.  He is rich.  He is successful.  But he is lonely.

So Mahe does what many people do.  He takes out an ad in the Personal Classifieds.  A kind of online dating before there was an online.  And people read the papers from all over the world.  Or at least back home in France they did.

And Louis strikes up a relationship with a beautiful girl from back home.  They write.  And eventually he proposes to her.

Louis's pen-pal girlfriend, Julie, says Yes, and Julie boards a ship, the Mississippi, to come to Reunion to marry him.

And they all live happily ever after.

Or . . . maybe not.

Perhaps Louis and Julie can act as our guide in better understanding these complicated matters of the heart.

We will give you a list of potential behaviors that your new partner might exhibit.  You decide which ones might be overlooked by romantic love, and which ones might prompt you to call it quits.

1.     The woman you married is not the person she claims she is.  She is not, for example, Julie Roussel at all.  Her real name is Marion Vergano.
2.     She has a boyfriend named Richard.
3.     She and Richard met your fiancee Julie on board the Mississippi and one or both of them threw her overboard so that Marion could pretend to be Julie.
4.     Richard and Julie have an abusive relationship with each other.  Richard shows up on the island and yells at and strikes Julie in public.  Julie comes home and tells you that her bruises are from falling.
5.     Julie takes all but 475,000 francs from your personal account and all from your business account and disappears, leaving you virtually broke in comparison to your expenses.
6.     The real Julie's sister Berthe shows up and the two of you hire a private detective to find Marion, causing you to spend even more of what is left of your money.
7.     You spot Marion on television partying at a dance club in Antibes.  She is enjoying life, living it up, and is all over the men on the dance floor.
8.     You arrive at the dance club and wait for her backstage with a gun, only to find her calling your bluff and telling you to go ahead and kill her.
9.     She reveals that she is not Marion Vergano either.  She was orphaned young and has lived a life of crime, doing stints in prison.
10.    She is working as a prostitute.
11.    After you hook up with her again and the two of you set up house in Aix-en-Provence, she grows hot and cold.  She teases you that she will make love with you and then she refuses.
12.    She demands more money to keep up the lifestyle she desires.  She convinces you to sell your entire business so that the two of you can spend the cash.
13.    When the private detective shows up, still doing his job and having tracked her here, your passion for her leads you to kill him so that he will not have her arrested for the drowning of the real Julie Roussel from aboard the Mississippi.
14.    Now that you too are a fugitive from justice, you try to go back to your apartment to get the cash you just gained from liquidating your company, only to find the apartment swarming with police, forcing you and Marion to flee to Switzerland without any money.
15.    As you drive through the snow-covered mountains looking for shelter, she taunts you, comparing you to Richard and claiming that he was the better man.
16.    She tries to abandon you in the middle of the night.  When you awaken she pretends she was out of bed due to a rat and demands that you buy rat poison.
17.    When you do she starts slipping some of the rat poison into your drinks, slowing increasing the amounts so that you begin to die a slow death.
18.    When you force your way out of the cabin and onto the road to try to get help she returns from having hitched a ride with a trucker and offers you one more drink, attempting to finish you off.

Has she crossed a line yet?

Yet you tell her, Go ahead.  Fill the cup.  Finish me off.  I still love you.

And the two of you walk off into the woods arm-in-arm to continue your life of bliss together.

And they all live dysfunctionally ever after.

Ah, love.

With a friend like Julie, who needs the devil?



Mississippi Mermaid is two movies in one.  It begins as a kind of suspense mystery where the viewer tries to understand the strange behavior of the new bride, followed by the question of where did she go.

But it dispenses with that idea fairly quickly and moves into a romantic drama triumphing in the bathos of mutual codependency.

Francois Truffaut ostensibly is borrowing from Hitchcock, with whom he has spent the last few years in conversation and in the publication of their book together.

But Truffaut cannot really do Hitchcock, and he does not really try.  He is a director of human relationships, and that is the focus of this film.  The suspense element is a mere formality which he seems eager to abandon quickly in order to get on with the relationship.

And despite the unrealistic expositional conversations that the two have when they reunite (Oh, that is who you really are; I forgive you; let's keep loving each other as if there were no consequences), the chemistry between these two great stars remains palpable.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve.

Put them in a film together and let them take care of the rest.

Then add the great character actors Marcel Barbert and Michel Bouquet respectively as factory manager Jardine and private detective Comolli.

And you have another delightful Truffaut film.

Just watch out for those red flags.

They might could save you a lot of trouble.