Marianne Denicourt and Judith Perrignon: Mauvais génie (2005)

 

I'd say that all writing – even biography – is to a large extent autobiographical: we're writing our personal findings, even if they're about someone else, and we select according to own own tastes and opinions, deleting others we don't like or which conflict with our own. If we mention the 'real' name of that someone else, then we expect people to recognise that the person talked about is that same person, although of course we're only giving a biased representation of that person, even if we quote liberally. It's at that point that 'reality' and fiction collide, but what if the artist, the person making the work, calls particular individuals by different names? Is this a collision of 'reality' with fiction, or just fiction tout court?

The noted film director Arnaud Desplechin – perhaps the best of his generation to judge by his professional and amateur reviews – made three films in which Marianne Denicourt was a major actor: the medium-length La Vie des morts (1991), La Sentinelle (1992) and Comment je me suis disputé...(ma vie sexuelle). Denicourt was Desplechin's partner for some years, although how many isn't clear. Certainly by the time of Desplechin's Esther Kahn (2000) she doesn't appear in the casting.

Then in 2004 Desplechin makes the film Rois et reine and there's a huge problem: Denicourt complains that Desplechin has in effect invaded her life and exposed intimate details about it. Rois et reine was released in December 2004, and the co-written book Mauvais génie was published in January 2005.

In April 2006 Desplechin won a court case against Denicourt, in which it was decreed that art isn't life, film doesn't consist of slices of real life. The Nora in Rois et reine isn't Denicourt, and Denicourt wasn't entitled to the 200,000 euros damages she claimed. Interesting.

Denicourt and Perrignon's novel – in which she calls the film director Arnold Duplancher – is therefore booted out of court, irrelevant. Desplechin may have been a little indelicate at times, but... In the book, Juliette Binoche had refused a major part in the film, considering it a 'réglement de comptes' (or settling of debts), seems to have seen Nora as Marianne, but the court has ruled that art is art. 

Marianne Denicourt includes a number of letters – either true or false or a mixture of both – between various people, including those of 'Arnaud Duplancher' to herself and a final one of hers to him, 'Duplancher's' letter to her ex-partner Daniel Auteil, etc. 'Duplancher' comes out of the, er, novel, as egotistical, addicted to prescription tranquillisers, hated by everyone apart from himself, a genius perhaps but wildly flawed in personality. This is fascinating reading. One of my favourite comments, and I translate:

'Sometimes, in the privacy of his flat, he leans down to his navel, where since he was little he likes to clean out the fluff left there by his pullovers.' (The works of Arnaud Desplechin are among the many films and books which have been accused of 'nombrilisme', or navel-gazing.)

Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep (1996)

 

Olivier Asseyas's Irma Vep is a film about a film crew making a remake of Louis Feuillade's silent ten-part classic Les Vampires (1915), with Musidora playing the rooftop jewel thief Irma Vep (an anagram of 'vampire').

The film gives several stabs at the state of the film industry of the time, with the director of the remake being played by Truffaut's iconic Nouvelle Vague actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, here seen as a neurotic, superannuated director (René Vidal) trying to capture back his former glory. He's chosen to have Maggie Cheung (who plays herself playing herself in Assayas's film) as Irma Vep, and it becomes apparent that he's interested in her playing in a skintight black latex suit bought from a sex shop. (Interestingly, Asseyas himself must have been taken by it too, and not so long afterwards he married Cheung, although they separated in 2001.)

The lesbian dress designer Zoé (Nathalie Richard), also a heroin dealer who incidentally is sexually attracted to Maggie, tells her over a meal in a cafeteria that Hollywood is all money and show for very little return. And during an interview Maggie is told by her interviewer (played by Antoine Basier) that René's cinema is passé, as is today's French cinema, which is all about navel-gazing solely designed for intellectuals: in part, no doubt Asseyas agreed with these sentiments.

Although Maggie – speaking no French and the film thus being filled with French and mainly badly spoken English (especially by Léaud) – seems really lost in this insane world, she tries to get into the part, even to the point of stealing jewels from her hotel (in her latex gear) and throwing them into the street from the rooftop: very odd scenes.

René hates the filming and walks out on the first takes, later attacks his wife and has a nervous breakdown. There is no way he can continue the film. It is decided that the director José Murano (played by Lou Castel, who also imitated Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Fassbinder's own Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte (Beware of a Holy Whore) (1971)) will take René's place, although Murano is adamant that Maggie must go as a Chinese woman playing the lead part in a French remake is ridiculous: he chooses Laure (Nathalie Boutefeu) for the role, and of course a new stuntperson will have to be found.

A crazy, fun film who film lovers who will appreciate the references, and maybe a more important film of Assayas's than some critics have said.