Mademoiselle (1966)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Walter M

  
  "Mademoiselle" starts with a middle-aged schoolteacher(Jeanne Moreau) opening the sluice gates on a dam, flooding the small village where she works. By the time she gets back, the villagers already know who did it, Manou(Ettore Manni), an itinerant Italian laborer who is… More
  "Mademoiselle" starts with a middle-aged schoolteacher(Jeanne Moreau) opening the sluice gates on a dam, flooding the small village where she works. By the time she gets back, the villagers already know who did it, Manou(Ettore Manni), an itinerant Italian laborer who is also being blamed for a recent rash of fires. The schoolteacher may not harbor such harsh thoughts towards him, but that does not mean she does not have it in for his son, Bruno(Keith Skinner), in her classes. And then there is another fire to which Manou responds in a very heroic fashion which does not change the villagers' opinion towards him one iota. Based on a story by Jean Genet and screenplay by Marguerite Duras, "Mademoiselle" is a deeply unsettling movie full of memorable images of ugliness and beauty that warns that cruelty will only to lead to more cruelties, set in a village where religion is always in the background. At this point in his career, Tony Richardson was chronologically and philosophically between "The Loved One" and "Charge of the Light Brigade" and "Mademoiselle" has that same satirical edge with a brief debate about whether chastity is more virtue than suffering that turns out to be totally symptomatic of the schoolteacher's existence. She is an outsider like Manou but left alone since she is at least French and not suspected because ironically she appears a paragon of virtue. From what I have read elsewhere, she is much too old to have her sexual awakening now with a sexual angle to her crimes, as she puts on high heels, black lace gloves and makeup before going out to commit them.