Would it still be possible to make this film today?

The famous film by Bertrand Blier, with Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere, is full of problematic scenes regarding sexual and gender-based violence. What place should we give it at a time of awareness on this subject?

It’s a cult film whose 50th anniversary is being celebrated on Wednesday March 20. But who celebrates them, in reality? Very few people. Because The Valseuses by Bertrand Blier is complicated to watch today, at a time of growing awareness of sexual and gender-based violence. Beyond the legal cases targeting its main actor, what place does this feature film retain today?

In a striking scene, Brigitte Fossey, a penniless military wife, is approached in an empty train by Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere. “What do you want ?”she asks. “What I would really like is for you to nurse my friend. He’s a big milk lover and, what’s more, he was born to an unknown mother,” replies Depardieu.

Fifty years later, this is what the actress said, at the beginning of March, on France 2 in front of Léa Salamé: “I can’t see. I can’t see because it’s an attack. When a girl is troubled, she’s vulnerable, she can’t fight. It’s horrible, horrible.”

“The scene is disturbing, that’s intentional”

Éric Neuhoff, film critic at Figarowrote the preface to the book The Valseusesrecently reissued by Seghers. “The scene is disturbing, it’s intentional, he analyzes. There is a terrible darkness in The Valseuses. It’s still two completely crazy guys who are heading towards the abyss.” Darkness mixed – perhaps this is where the bone is today – with lightness.

“What was curious was this mixture and this earthiness, this humor, the way the dialogue was written. We were not at all used to hearing that in films at the time.”

Éric Neuhoff, film critic

at franceinfo

Bérénice Hamidi is a lecturer at the University of Lyon II and works on the political issues of cultural representations. This film is an interesting subject of study for her. “It embodies a certain freedom that we like to attach to the 70s or 80s. The interest in looking at it again today is to measure the unsaid, the implicit, the silences, and that this image of freedom implied.”

Learn to “see the violence”

Problematic image because, according to her, the question of feminine feelings never arises. “There is no awareness that their behavior is proof of domination”she adds. “Cinema is still made to shock, to shake up the noodle dishretorts Eric Neuhoff. But I took the precaution of buying it on DVD in case it no longer existed on the platforms or on VOD.”