'Violette' centers on a French writer's enigmatic art and life
Violette Leduc was a pioneering mid-20th-century feminist French writer whose work most often was pulled from her own psychosexual turmoils. For all the upfrontness of her memoirs and thinly veiled romans 脿 clef, she could by all accounts be a forbidding presence, and this is the aspect that writer-director Martin Provost has chosen to affirm in 鈥淰iolette,鈥� starring Emmanuelle Devos. Not many of Leduc鈥檚 written words are in this film, because Provost is equating the life with the work. His philosophy: Show the life, get the writer.
Despite its art-film trappings, this approach is not very far from the standard Hollywood approach to an artist鈥檚 life. Since it鈥檚 notoriously difficult to make a movie about a writer without resorting to a lot of clich茅d 鈥淎ha!鈥� moments at the writing desk, Provost鈥檚 method has its justifications, especially since Leduc鈥檚 life was indeed the source of so much of her work. Still, there is a disconnect here between the woman on-screen, who is almost preternaturally indrawn, and the writer, whose sexual and emotional frankness was startling on the page. We are not made to see how someone could exude such diametrically opposed personas. (Leduc鈥檚 only big commercial success during her lifetime was 鈥淟a B芒tarde,鈥� written in 1964, eight years before her death at age 65.)聽
Provost is attracted to 鈥渙utsider鈥� women whose lives are indistinguishable from their art. He is particularly mesmerized by the blank spaces in their psyches. His best film, the masterpiece 鈥淪茅raphine,鈥� starring Yolande Moreau, was about the real-life S茅raphine Louis, a religiously devout housekeeper who lived most of her anguished life in poverty and painted shockingly avant-garde floral abstractions. That film had a mysterious, brute lyricism; the moments of emotional revelation surrounding the near-mute S茅raphine were like epiphanies.
Provost tries to accomplish for Leduc what 鈥淪茅raphine鈥� did for S茅raphine Louis; that is, he wants to dispense with all the traditional biopic filler and focus on his heroine鈥檚 plangent, embattled soul. Devos鈥檚 performance resists that approach, though. She鈥檚 an imposing presence, with a blocklike, almost cubist visage, but, for a woman who wrote about passion, her Leduc is almost all agony and no ecstasy. Leduc believed she was unattractive, and so we get from her such typical pronouncements as, 鈥淚鈥檓 a neurotic, crazy, used-up old bag.鈥� I don鈥檛 think Devos cracks a single smile in the movie, which is rather overdoing it. Her character arc is more like a flat line.
Provost focuses on Leduc鈥檚 inexorable attraction to calamity and dissolution, but, at the same time, he presents her as a big blank enigma. (He also lards the soundtrack with music by Arvo P盲rt for that creepy, doomy effect.) Although Leduc was part of a heady, exhilarating Parisian arts scene, Provost avoids showing us any of the major players except for Jean Genet (a very fine Jacques Bonnaff茅) and, most prominently, Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain), Leduc鈥檚 mentor and benefactor and the icon for whom the bisexual Leduc carried an unrequited torch. De Beauvoir, as played by Kiberlain, is even more of a stiff than Leduc. (Typical 辫别苍蝉茅别: 鈥淢arriage is an imposture.鈥�) She is also fond of telegraphing future glory, as when, referring to Leduc鈥檚 barrier-breaking, she tells her 鈥� and us 鈥� that 鈥渙ne day they鈥檒l thank you.鈥�
Did Provost think that, if de Beauvoir lightened up a bit, Leduc鈥檚 furious dourness would seem absurd by comparison? And did he omit even walk-ons by the likes of Cocteau, Camus, and Sartre because he was afraid his movie might turn into a highbrow 鈥淢idnight in Paris鈥�?
De Beauvoir believed that artists, however bereft, could achieve salvation through literature. Provost doesn鈥檛 quite endorse this high-toned sentimentality; Leduc is only marginally happier by the film鈥檚 end, and only because she has moved into the countryside and essentially removed herself from the fray. Provost is in love with the battlegrounds of creation, not its emancipations. He鈥檚 an extraordinary artist, but his fixation on the spooky enigma of genius has become programmatic. 鈥淪茅raphine鈥� was haunting; 鈥淰iolette,鈥� for all its writhings, is familiar. Grade: B (Unrated.)
