LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE (1945)

Cast

Plot

Beneath the veneer of glamour, occupied Parisian high-society has become a rotten core of corruption and hate, a place that has spawned Helene, a young woman intent, and capable of, bringing about not just the humiliation of her ex-lover, but his exquisite suffering. The visual texture is not muted grey, but sharp and contrasty, the camera is constantly prowling and tracking, the dialogue (by Cocteau) is brilliantly jewelled, literary to the point of preciousness, the very antithesis of the later monosyllabics. Yet as one watches the elegant socialite (played by Casarès with superbly steely venom) spin a cold-blooded plot to destroy her rival after being humiliatingly spurned in a liaison in the interests of true love, one could hardly be anywhere but in Bresson's world. Sexuality takes precedence over salvation, but there is the same interiority, the same intensity, the same rigorous exclusion of all inessentials. A dark, hypnotic tale.