Christine Pascal's twisty (and at times twisted) detective thriller, The Bitch, leads with its 1940s noir influences on its sleeve. A young woman is abruptly ejected from a car on a rainy night. She's picked up by a taciturn stranger who turns out to be a police detective. The night city is visible in the car windows via rear projection as jazz lilts through the score and they exchange halting information and probing glances. Finally they stop at the canal waterfront, invoking shades of Le Quai des brumes, and the suspense of what will happen next hangs heavy in the air. The nostalgic fantasy is violently torn asunder as the detective suddenly proceeds to rape the girl on the hood of his car. The encounter becomes cryptic as the girl eventually appears to welcome his embrace and the initial violation turns towards the erotic. The girl, Isabelle Huppert as Aline, is revealed to be only 17 and she and her adopted family press rape charges against the detective, Richard Barry as Lucien Sabatier. The prologue concludes with a brief sentencing sequence and Sabatier, disgraced, goes to prison for the next six years.
Pascal, known largely for her work in front of the camera in this country, wrote and directed a handful of films; never shying away from challenging subject matter. In The Bitch, Pascal adopts conventions of American film noir as well as French poetic realism while simultaneously interrogating them and pushing them nearly to the point of breaking. This feels in sharp contrast to the mode of film policier that was so prevalent in French popular culture in the late 70s and early 80s. The tone of the film takes a shift towards modernity following the opening, but The Bitch is still brimming with classic cinema references: private detectives, doppelgängers, double crosses, wayward daughters, family secrets, gangsters, and (most prominently) the femme fatale. While her use of these tropes was derided by critics at the time, it's hard not to see The Bitch presaging the wild narrative structure of the erotic thrillers that would rise in popularity shortly after its release. Rather than retread familiar plot devices, Pascal and her talented cast are able to lean into genre expectations, subvert them, and produce something both more ambiguous and provocative as a result.
Following his imprisonment, Lucien reluctantly takes a job with a detective agency run by former policemen he worked with before he assaulted Aline. While his old friends seem willing to bring him back into the fold, his family has left him and his wife has remarried. The P.I. work consists mostly of adultery cases until a potentially wealthy client representing a fashion designer asks specifically for Sabatier to investigate a rival. Sebatier ventures into the heart of Le Sentier - Paris' textile district at the time and historically a Jewish enclave - where he runs into his friend and former cellmate, Rony. Sebatier explains that he's looking for Édith Weber and Rony attempts to warn him away, explaining that Weber is some kind of untouchable in the Jewish community. Sebatier persists only to discover that Édith Weber is the adopted identity of Aline Kaminker, the girl he raped 6 years ago. This discovery drives Sebatier to uncover the mystery of what happened to Aline while he was imprisoned, the fate of her adopted family, and who set him on Aline's trail in the first place. Sebatier's path causes him to collide with Aline's former boyfriend; and underworld figure, Max Halimi (Vittorio Mezzogiorno); and the three comprise an uneasy and volatile love triangle.
The scaffolding holding The Bitch in place is that of a thriller, filled with intentional nods towards noir, but the execution is firmly in the French arthouse tradition. In American film noir, crime is always punished and desire is nearly always fatal. In classic French permutations of the genre, love and honor are legitimate even for crooks, but doom is pervasive and inescapable. In The Bitch, desire is certainly risky but it's also complicated and mercurial. Crime sometimes has consequences and other times it's a mere detail. There's an investigation that drives the plot forward but the real mystery is whatever's going on behind the inscrutable faces of its characters. The entire cast is able to maintain that mood but Pascal is especially fascinated with Aline. There are multiple close ups lingering on Huppert's face as her expression shifts just enough to reveal profound depths of intelligence, emotion, and enigmatic motivation. Huppert's performance in The Bitch is incredibly strong and of a similar caliber to her roles in The Piano Teacher or Elle. As the premise of the film is so provocative, it's crucial to have such a fascinating character at the heart of it. While I cannot begin to fully comprehend what motivates Aline, I (like Pascal) can't take my eyes off of her.
Largely unseen and unavailable for decades (in the US, at least), La Garce/The Bitch has been restored and released via Fun City Editions as part of a two film set - Fatal Femmes. Special features include an excellent essay from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas as well as an audio commentary from the always fantastic Samm Deighan. Fatal Femmes includes another French crime flick, Neige, directed by another female actor/director: Juliet Berto. I've been such a fan of FCE's output and French crime cinema will forever be celebrated here, so I couldn't grab a copy fast enough. I recommend you do the same.
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