Meurtrières

An extremely thought-provoking movie that leaves you wanting a sequel - I can't help thinking that this is the film that Baise Moi ought to have been.

While it is easy to see the story as about innocent girls fighting an unpleasant, chauvinistic world, it should be remembered that Nina is the central character, and Lizzy is actually a supporting cypher. It is Nina who we see as a newly orphaned teen, wandering in a fog of repressed grief and rage, depressed and wanting only to be somewhere else - a role Kodja plays masterfully - while Lizzy we are introduced to as an anarchic girl with no past who has taken too many pills and narrowly avoided death.

Nina finds herself handed off by a sympathetic but shallow cousin who simply places her with one of her beauty salon clients to drive to La Rochelle. The lady in question is very obviously a sexual predator, yet Nina is too lost and too innocent to notice. She ends up in the family hotel, and what a family! The laissez-faire father, the monstrous mother, the spoilt and petulant son...

Finally overwhelmed by grief, Nina is dumped by these lovely people at the hospital, where she is consigned to a sanitarium, and here she meets the apparently delightful Lizzy, who is also in recovery.

Soon enough, they 'escape' and rapidly find themselves without friends, family, money, a home... they can't wash, they can't eat, they can't sleep. Every time they ask, they are refused or abused, and every time they try to take instead, they mess up. The end result is the suspense of an inevitable confrontational ending. Yet that is not quite how the film DOES end.

And it isn't quite that simple. Lizzy is, in fact, a psychotic who really ought to have stayed in hospital. Not everyone is horrible - Lizzy's boyfriend is actually a caring kind of guy, who does try to help; there's a distrustful but kind lorry driver, a fatalistic old market stall seller and a self-obsessed affluent do-gooder.

Yet the only people who actually offer charity want something in exchange - and if there is no money, then sex is demanded. Yet perhaps the most harrowing scene in that respect is where the girls simply try to get a shower in a truck stop - the mercenary stares of the clientèle become truly horrifying.

The story of the two girls unfolds as a bad dream, where every door is closed to them in turn. Whatever they try to do, and wherever they go, they seem to end up in the same place. They are, in geographical reality, travelling in small circles, and yet all they really need to do is travel from La Rochelle to Bordeaux.

Meurtrieres is a highly polished movie that succeeds in placing the viewer in the minds of the leads. This is due in part to the wonderfully empathetic direction, but mainly to the outstanding performances from Kodja and Sallette, who really deserve accolades, and hopefully great careers ahead.

For sure Sylvie Pialat, famous director Maurice Pialat's widow, did the right thing in choosing Patrick Grandperret to carry through "Meurtrières" (not the title originally chosen), one of her late husband's pet projects for years. Pialat had even started filming it back in the seventies only to call it quits after a few days, as he was dissatisfied with the pair of lead actresses he had hired. He tried again in the eighties with Sandrine Bonnaire but did not even begin shooting. After "Le Garçu", his last movie, Pialat still considered directing it. Now that Maurice is in a more peaceful world, who else but Grandperret could do justice to the master, flesh out the twenty pages written by Pialat (from actual facts), update these facts dating back to 1972 and find two believable young actresses?

Grandperret is the right choice for two main reasons. First he is a very estimable director who, not having been able to work for the cinema for ten years, needed a second chance. Second, he had been Pialat's first assistant-director for two years and he was the person best suited not to betray his mentor. Sylvie Pialat was aware that Grandperret's personal matter-of-fact style was in harmony with her late husband's touch. The finished product must not have disappointed her, as the basic material really inspired Grandperret, making "Meurtrières" his best film to-date.

The director quite rightly chooses to plunge the viewer as of the very first scene into the heart of the tragedy. In the first sequence a dazed girl covered in blood wanders about a road in the middle of the night. She has just murdered someone, no doubt about it. She is soon joined by another young lady, as reddened by blood as she is. As a result, when a flashback makes the viewer travel back before the facts, they know that the two girls are doomed, even if the circumstances of the drama have not been described yet. The two protagonists can't possibly escape their fate and what the viewer wants to know now is not "WHAT will happen to them?" but "HOW will the circumstances lead them to this fatal end?" And just like in Greek tragedy, fact after fact will turn against the two characters, whether or not they hold a share of responsibility in what happens to them. But what makes "Meurtrières" a modern tragedy –and not a classical one- is that it is not the gods who play with humans like puppets but it is today's society, based on money and individualism as it is, that causes the two girls to fall down. It is BECAUSE they are penniless that Lissy and Nina are left out of everything. In such a selfish world as ours they just can't expect any support, any help. As the waiter of a café coolly tells them (and that could epitomize consumer society as a whole): "either you buy something or you beat it!" And they beat it…until they go beyond the point of no return.

As I said above, the tone adopted by the director is matter of fact, neither too sentimental nor too moralizing, and all the more effective for that, as things speak for themselves. And the form is the right one as well: in this "absurd road movie", the girls are always on the move but they do not go from one point to the other, they go round in circles until they are back to their starting point. The places are very definite geographically speaking: all the action takes place in the French "department" of Charente-Maritime, with clearly identified spots such as La Rochelle, l'Ile de Ré, and so on… Most of the time they are connected with vacation and luxury, which, by contrast, makes the lot of the unfortunate heroines all the harder.

Hande Kodja and Céline Sallette, two talented newcomers (who also contributed to the script), give a breathtaking performance. It is amazing to think that they are beginners. They are surrounded by an excellent cast ; all are so natural that we forget they are actors.

Let's hope Grandperret is off for a new start. "Meurtières" should constitute a precious visiting card for the director. And thank you to Sylvie Pialat for trusting him the way she did.