Rating: 4.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 43/52 | Starring Jeanne Moreau
Florence Carala confesses her love for Julien Tavernier over the phone, and Julien his love for her. Julien sits in his office at Carala Corp. They arrange to meet at their usual spot, the Royal Cameo, once Julien finishes the job. They hang up, and Julien calls for Geneviève to watch things while he takes care of something in his office. Julien returns to his office, donning gloves, a revolver, and a rope attached to a hook. Opening the window, he steps out onto the balcony that lines the outside of the building. He throws the hook up, catching on the railing one floor up. Down a few windows, Julien opens one into a reception area outside Mr. Carala’s office. Mr. Carala calls him in. Julien puts a gun to his head. Mr. Carala recognizes the gun as his own.
A cutaway, then Julien slips the gun into Mr. Carala’s hand to make it look like a suicide. He locks the inside doors, using his knife to hold open the latch as he exits the last one. Julien’s phone rings, and he rushes down the rope to get to his phone to answer. Maurice, the security guard, and Geneviève leave the office with Julien. Outside, Julien gets into his convertible. Véronique, the florist across the way, says hello to him. Véronique’s boyfriend, Louis, checks himself out in the shop window. Julien starts the car, looks up, and sees his rope hanging from the balcony rail—in his rush to get to the phone, he left it behind.
Julien rushes over to the elevator to go up. While it ascends, Maurice shuts off the power to leave for the weekend, trapping Julien between floors. Maurice also closes the gates to the building behind him. Louis notices the convertible is still running. He jumps in and starts to drive off. Upset, Véronique runs after him and jumps in. Trying to turn off the windshield wipers, Louis pops the cover instead. So, when the car drives by the Royal Cameo, Florence sees Véronique and assumes Julien is in the driver’s seat. Florence can only assume that Julien didn’t go through with the plan.
The film follows these threads as Julien tries to escape, Florence wanders the streets searching for him, and Louis and Véronique wreak havoc.
As others have said, the film is most magical when Jeanne Moreau wanders the streets at night, the Miles Davis score pulling us into her somber disconcertion. This film is the first in which she didn’t wear the full makeup regalia that other directors asked of her. That, along with the natural lighting of the night shots, gives the film an anti-romance to its unadorned naturalism.
The film’s crime story leads folks to consider it noir, but in some ways, it functions contrary to many noir tropes. Most notably, Florence isn’t quite the femme fatale—no double cross in mind, and nothing won in the murder. Similarly, perhaps more convincingly, the film is lumped in with the French New Wave. Louis and Véronique are a sort of proto Michel and Patricia from Breathless—Louis, a car thief with a record, drags Véronique, aware but coerced, into his life, but doesn’t share her resolve.
That said, Miles Davis’s score gives this film its place in history. Through his improvisations for the soundtrack, Davis developed his modal jazz style, which he would fully employ the following year on Kind of Blue.
Still, the script is whip-smart, building tension in tiny measures, crafting a thread that doesn’t give way until the final minutes.