Luc Moullet's Un litre de lait (2006)

(In September of this year, 2021, the Cinémathèque française showed a number of films by the almost forgotten Luc Moullet, who at the age of eighty-four is still very much alive. When the daily paper Libération interviewed him, living on the fifth floor of a block of flats, he said he's horrified of lifts, and measures the state of a visitor's health by counting the minutes between their initial intercom ring and the time they arrive at his door. In another article in the same paper, Moullet says "I'm not a very normal person. I always live a little at the side of reality". (My translation, and I shall continue to include this paragraph in any further posts on Mouillet as they are not only an introduction to his work, but also (surely) strong indications of an Asperger element.))

Moullet waited until the death of his mother before making this film because of the autobiographical content. This is a rural, montainous area. Gilles is a teenager reading Ulysses at the kitchen table in the the presence of his younger sister Anne and his mother, who gives him money to fetch a litre of milk from the Roux family. Extremely reluctantly, Gilles (joined by Anne) begins his deliberately very slow walk: he is aware that his mother is having an affair with Roux's wife, and it is clear that Anne doesn't. The film is taken from the point of view of Gilles, and there are imagined flash forwards to his encounter with the woman, he checks his pulse and his heartbeat, refuses the short cut that Anne proposes, pisses against a tree, anything to put off the moment. Finally, when he reaches the farm it's a young worker who serves him, thus avoiding the embarrassing meeeting. Unfortunately he falls down on the return and spills the milk. Anne gives him the money for the second trip. I couldn't help thinking that at the time Ulysses was (stupidly) thought a very sexy book, and the relationship between milk and sperm is evident: no doubt that would have added to 'Gilles's' discomfort.

Luc Moullet's Foix : la ville la plus ringarde de France (1994)

(In September of this year, 2021, the Cinémathèque française showed a number of films by the almost forgotten Luc Moullet, who at the age of eighty-four is still very much alive. When the daily paper Libération interviewed him, living on the fifth floor of a block of flats, he said he's horrified of lifts, and measures the state of a visitor's health by counting the minutes between their initial intercom ring and the time they arrive at his door. In another article in the same paper, Moullet says "I'm not a very normal person. I always live a little at the side of reality". (My translation, and I shall continue to include this paragraph in any further posts on Mouillet as they are not only an introduction to his work, but also (surely) strong indications of an Asperger element.))

Luc Moullet's Foix, with its mockumentary voiceover, belies the reality we see: the voice talks about the wonderful sights of Foix, but we only see dismal buildings; the voice talks about a wonderful transport system, where the viewer only sees chaos, etc.  In the Rex cinema there is an example of graffiti: 'Le Rex 'cest bien mais je préfère le sexe.' Most old-fashioned town in France? Well, most if not all towns would look similar if taken from a negative angle. An odd film, but then it's by Luc Moullet.

Luc Moullet's Le Prestige de la mort (2007)

(In September of this year, 2021, the Cinémathèque française showed a number of films by the almost forgotten Luc Moullet, who at the age of eighty-four is still very much alive. When the daily paper Libération interviewed him, living on the fifth floor of a block of flats, he said he's horrified of lifts, and measures the state of a visitor's health by counting the minutes between their initial intercom ring and the time they arrive at his door. In another article in the same paper, Moullet says "I'm not a very normal person. I always live a little at the side of reality". (My translation, and I shall continue to include this paragraph in any further posts on Moullet as they are not only an introduction to his work, but also (surely) strong indications of an Asperger element.))

Moullet's inspiration for this crazy, absurd film came from Cecil B. DeMille's The Whispering Chorus (1917). He plays himself as does his wife, Antonietta Moullet (née Pizzorno). He's a film maker who can't make a film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Desperate Remedies – Hardy's first published novel, involving false identity – because of lack of money. Wandering around the Alps in Provence with Hardy's novel, Moullet stumbles upon a dead body and hits on what he thinks is a wonderful way of getting money for his film: if he swaps identities with the corpse, changing his own passport with the dead man's, when people think Luc Moullet is dead they'll rush to watch his films, television channels will show them and bring his widow a great deal of money.

Obviously this is in part a satire on the fact that most ageing cultural figures are only recognised after his death. But of course there's much more to it than that, as Moullet, when he is arrested by the police for the murder of himself, and whom his own wife will kill because she thinks he's the man whose identity he's assumed – will perhaps discover in his final seconds. Absurd indeed.

Luc Moullet's Empire de Médor (1986)

(In September of this year, 2021, the Cinémathèque française showed a number of films by the almost forgotten Luc Moullet, who at the age of eighty-four is still very much alive. When the daily paper Libération interviewed him, living on the fifth floor of a block of flats, he said he's horrified of lifts, and measures the state of a visitor's health by counting the minutes between their initial intercom ring and the time they arrive at his door. In another article in the same paper, Moullet says "I'm not a very normal person. I always live a little at the side of reality". (My translation, and I shall continue to include this paragraph in any further posts on Mouillet as they are not only an introduction to his work, but also (surely) strong indications of an Asperger element.))

In 1972 Luc Moullet was the producer of a short by Jean-Pierre Letellier called Le Cabot, which involved the killing of a dog for the sake of the film. It was banned for two years, angering Moullet who considered the French love of dogs as on the same level as Indians' love of cows. Fourteen years later he got his revenge by making Empire de Médor, a wild attack on dog worship.

The film begins in Asnières-sur-Seine, where in 1899 the author Georges Harmois and the feminist journalist Marguerite Durand established a business, a Cimetière pour chiens et chats, which now contains, among many others, the remains of Rintintin and Clément, Michel Houellebecq's dog.* Moullet being an absurdist, his sensibilities obviously don't stretch to the absurdity of treating animals as inferior beings, which is evidently a serious error on his part, but future generations are now fortunately learning from the errors of the past and have moved on. The fact that, as the narrator states either correctly or in error, the amount of money the French spend on dogs is the same as the Gross National Product of Senegal is entirely irrelevant: almost anything can be proved by juggling with figures, and comparing one country with another in such a way is meaningless.

However, Moullet makes some valid points, such as the useless and wasteful spending on the grooming and beautifying of dogs, the exhibitions, etc, although I'm pretty certain the dogshit machines have now completely disappeared in favour of poop scooping. But this revenge documentary is dangerously flawed: we can hardly expect a balanced argument under the circumstances, but dogs are not only invaluable as substitutes for human partners (and how many humans are anything like as faithful?), they are invaluable to such incapacitated people as the blind, and their superhuman powers are also invaluable to police forces. In his lust for revenge, above all in his lust to sacrifice a dog for a film, a highly developed creature for the sake of art, Moullet lost the plot. Which is a huge pity as he's a great film director.

*The narrator says that this is the only paying cemetery, which is untrue: possibly things were different in 1986, but at the time of writing the private cemetery of Picpus charges too.

Luc Moullet's Un steack trop cuit (1960)

(In September of this year, 2021, the Cinémathèque française showed a number of films by the almost forgotten Luc Moullet, who at the age of eighty-five is still very much alive. When the daily paper Libération interviewed him, living on the fifth floor of a block of flats, he said he's horrified of lifts, and measures the state of a visitor's health by counting the minutes between their initial intercom ring and the time they arrive at his door. In another article in the same paper, Moullet says "I'm not a very normal person. I always live a little at the side of reality". (My translation, and I shall continue to include this paragraph in any further posts on Mouillet as they are not only an introduction to his work, but also (surely) strong indications of an Asperger element.))

Un steack trop cuit is Mouillet's first film, being a short like the majority of his movies. He had already been writing for the prestigious Cahiers du cinéma since the age of nineteen and from the beginning he was stongly Nouvelle Vague influenced. Impressed by a large article he wrote about Godard's A bout de souffle (1960), Godard introduced him to the producer Georges de Beauregard, who produced this Moullet's first film. It is quirky, well off-centre and was filmed in his flat on a very low budget.

It stars Moullet's younger brother Patrice as JoJo and his older sister is played by Françoise Vatel. They are both still studying and their parents have gone away for a short time. The sister makes the meals but overcooks the dinner steak and Jojo has to borrow something else to eat from a neighbour. His sister later leaves Jojo to go out with a boyfriend, much to Jojo's disappointment and jealousy.

Moullet sees film-making as a form of smuggling, like you initially give a story to the audience but leave them to work out what the film is really about, see through the apparent salt to find the cocaine. And, looking at events from an oblique angle, it's not difficult to find an absurd, anarchic vision: Moullet is all about absurdity and anarchy. When Jojo goes the the toilet after eating the bad steak and asks for paper, his sister rips pages from an edition of Cahiers du cinéma; Jojo is an uncouth eater who uses his fingers and spits out his food, hurling abuse at his sister; instead of washing the pots after she's left he just breaks them and leaves them on the floor (in a moment that will be reprised in Anatomie d'un rapport, where the unnamed character 'Christine Hébert' (really Marie-Christine Questerbert) goes on a smashing spree in the kitchen.

But the film is not without its (admittedly almost incestuous) loving moments: it's a little odd to see Jojo take off his socks as soon as he comes in from school, but then he uses his bare feet to stroke his sisters legs at the dinner table; and then just before she leaves to join her boyfriend, she kisses him tenderly on the nose.

Moullet makes his entrance to cinema without wiping his feet conventionally, and his whole film career will see him in his full unconventional glory.