576 - Douce, France, 1943. Dir. Claude Autant-Lara.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

576 - Douce, France, 1943.  Dir. Claude Autant-Lara.

For Douce de Bonafe, this story is the Anna Karenina of Belle Epoch France.

For her governess Irene Comtat, it is the Dangerous Liaisons.

Indeed, Irene has been reading Pierre Choderlas de Laclos' novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), when the master of the house, Engelbert de Bonafe, enters her room.

Does this suggest that Irene does not share M. de Bonafe's affection for her?

Engelbert is a widower with a wooden leg.  He considers his life a failure.  At least he has his daughter Douce to make up for it.

He is installing an elevator in the center of the home, allowing others to think it is for him and his leg, while he is really doing it for his aging mother.

His mother, Madame de Bonafe, insists on taking the stairs.

The film begins with a tracking glide over the snow-swept streets of Paris, the Eiffel tower under construction (using miniatures), and follows a cleric into the sanctuary of a church.

The choir is singing.  A habited woman kneels at an altar in front of a Nativity scene, reading a prayer book.

The cleric finds an umbrella on the floor.  He looks around but does not see a likely owner.  He leans it against a chair outside the confessional, where he found it.

We move into the confessional.

A woman is confessing a relationship with a man.  She is veiled.  We cannot see her.  We do not know who it is.  Upon first viewing, it seems she confesses that they are having an affair.  Upon second viewing, it seems more likely she is saying she loves him.  The specific words she has used were spoken before we joined them.

She is not repentant.  She is defiant.  The priest asks her questions.  He learns that the two live under the same roof but that the man is not a member of the family.  He is a domestic.  The priest suggests that this man will not bring her happiness.  She does not care.

Then this--

I will not threaten you with hell.  You are already on your way.
If I am with him, I do not care.
Everyone in hell is alone, without hope.  I beg you to reconsider.
My mind is made up.

Yikes.

The priest cannot give her absolution because she will not repent.

In fact, he is not sure why the woman has come to him at all or what she wants from him, but we know what Mr. Autant-Lara is saying to us.

Whoever this woman is, she knows her own heart.  She knows whom she loves, and she knows it with eternal certitude.

Irene the governess meets with Fabien Marani, her lover.  He is the steward of the house, the estate manager.  He has booked passage for them to Quebec, the North American French city.  They will be leaving right away.  Stealing away.  Eloping.

He also has a pile of money he has stolen from the estate.  Or so Irene discerns.  He tells her he won it at poker, but she is too smart to believe that.  She rebukes him.  This is not how she intends to score.  Her ambitions are bigger.  And less criminal.

Back at the house.  The de Bonafe house.

The cleric brings the umbrella.  You left this at the church.  The servant Estelle introduces him to Irene.  It is her umbrella.  She takes it.  Thanks him.  Now we know who was in the confessional, and who was so profoundly in love.

Until Irene goes to Douce's room.

And asks Douce why she took Irene's umbrella to church.

It was Douce in the confessional.

Now we know a secret that only she knows.

Irene traps Fabien into giving the money back to M. de Bonafe, who thinks he is merely giving him the new receipts.

She will force Fabien to do things her way.

When they are alone, Engelbert reveals his feelings to Irene.  He wants to marry her.  Make her the new Madame.

So if we are keeping count, we begin to figure out that Fabien and Irene are together.  That Irene could marry Engelbert, M. de Bonafe.  That Fabien could marry Douce--if he ever discovers her love for him--and that both servants could become members of the family, one in each generation, and become rich through natural means without having to steal.

Irene was right to come by it honestly.

Or legally, anyway.

Honesty is another question altogether.

The only problem is that Fabien loves Irene and pays no attention to Douce.  He hardly knows she exists, let alone that she loves him.

And Irene might not be able to go through with marriage to Engelbert.  Because of her own feelings.

On top of all that, the current Madame de Bonafe, grandma, suspects something is up, and she intends to thwart it.

This jumping class thing is not easy.

In fact, that is the real theme of the movie.  Know your place.  Stay in your lane.  Do not get too big for your breeches.  Or as Madame de Bonafe says, pray for patience and resignation.

At least that is the world Autant-Lara presents.  His actual point is to ridicule class consciousness.

To show its unintended consequences.

Some of which are lethal.

Douce might just have her chance to test her theory--that she will go anywhere with her love, even to hell, as long as she is with him--and in that test she might discover that her feelings are more capricious than she first thought.  The indulgent fantasies of entitled youth.  Fickle.  And fleeting.

Or that she has even more malevolent motives.  Too submerged for even her to realize.

Juliet was told not to love Romeo.

And if Douce did not learn her lesson through reading or attending the theatre, perhaps she will learn it through personal experience.