Post by Brad Nelson on May 31, 2020 6:27:48 GMT -8
French film are often my go-to source for “What the hell were they thinking?” Mississippi Mermaid fits nicely into that category.
A twice-topless (hey, that’s at least something) Catherine Deneuve plays Julie Roussel/Marion Vergano, a mail-order bride for Louis Mahé (played stiffly and stupidly by Jean-Paul Belmond0).
Deneuve is smoking’ hot throughout this while mostly keeping her clothes on. French movie or not, this is a very tame movie in that regard.
The setting is Reunion Island (off of Madagascar). Mahé owns a tobacco plantation and apparently manufactures cigarettes as well. He seems to be doing well. But he has no Deneuve in his life. (Few do.) We learn later that colonization of this island by the French was facilitated by importing prostitutes. But this comes after he marries Deneuve, so that bit of foreshadowing is out of order and certainly does him no good.
Deneuve is good in this. Belmondo is — I’m not sure what you’d call it — miscast? And yet in a way he does play to perfection a fellow who combines the traits of cluelessness and stupidity effectively. In this movie he:
+ Is a victim of an identity switch. Vergano replaces Roussel on the boat. When she arrives, she obviously doesn’t match the photo that Mahé has with him. She makes up some thin excuse. He believes her. But then would you throw Deneuve back into the sea? Probably not. Still, her story immediately isn’t matching in a number of ways.
+ Married for mere days, Mahé gives Roussel access to not only his private funds but his business funds.
+ He then by miraculous accident runs into Marion Vergano (who had run away to France) and quickly reconciles with her instead of killing her like he apparently planned to.
+ He later (another miraculous accident by chance) runs into the private investigator he had hired to track down Vergano. He won’t quit the investigation so Mahé kills the private investigator.
+ He buries the private investigator in the basement of the villa he’s renting. (We know this won’t turn out well, and it doesn’t when a ‘chance flood’ uncovers the body.) They leave the villa and try to remain very low profile.
+ He returns to Reunion Island where he sells his business for half price in order to get the money to keep Deneuve in pretty coats. It turns out Deneuve didn’t keep the money she stole but had given it to her partner at the time, the one who (she says) tossed the real Julie Roussel over the side of the boat so that she could take his place.
+ He returns with the money and she (surprisingly) waited for him in the small rooms they were renting in Lyon. He’s got a bagful of money. He takes a few bills of pocket money before they head out the door to do whatever, leaving the bagful of money in a black overstuffed satchel on a table in the middle of the room in plain sight. Not being as stupid as Mahé, Deneuve says “Shouldn’t you maybe hide that money, stupid?” I added the "stupid" part but it seemed implied. Mahé then puts it in some nook a few feet away that any maid could find in a jiffy.
+ When they return to the apartment, it’s surrounded by the police. Mahé attempts to get the money by going in the back way. No go. Police are swarming the place — but apparently do not notice a big red convertible pulling in and out right in front of them with two people in the car. The police are stupid in this as well. It must be catching. Deneuve gives him a big “I told you not to leave the money in the room” I-told-you-so. She’s right.
+ They both go on the run and hope to make it to Switzerland. They spend some time in a small cabin close to the border. Denueve, seeing that Mahé (only now) is a dead-end for her parasitic lifestyle, begins to poison Mahé who is getting sick by degrees.
+ Despite rat poison being in abundance in the place, it isn’t until Mahé sees a cartoon in the newspaper about Sleeping Beauty being poisoned by an apple that he gets it into his head that Deneuve is poisoning him. (You have to see this scene to fully comprehend the idiocy of it. But then that was at least half the entertainment value.)
+ Of course, now he finally gets his gumption up and strangles her to death. Roll credits.
+ Except, that’s not what he does. He tells her that he knows that she is poisoning him and, well, go ahead and fill to the brim (I’m not making this up) my coffee cup with your poisoned brew. I love you anyway.
+ He again takes her back. And she suddenly says she’s sorry and reunites with him as well.
I know I’ve left out some stupid stuff. But that’s still a lot. Although it goes without saying that a man could lose his head over Catherine Deneuve, there is no back story to this Mahé fellow that suggests he is anything other than a shrewd businessman and manager. But then as the movie progresses, we wonder how he could ever manage his breakfast, let alone a huge plantation and cigarette factory.
In the end, as they take off in the deep snow toward the Swiss border, we’re left guessing about their fate. Deneuve thought that the Swiss border was in this direction but he says, no, it’s in this other direction and they walk off in that direction. There is an implication that he may be dooming them both to death-by-frostbite as an intentional way to end their sad agony. But it could just as easily be death-by-stupidity. We will never know. Thankfully they never made a sequel.
I know this all sounds horrible, and it is. But its written in such a way that it does maintain your interest. And as far as I can tell there is no Mississippi River and no mermaid in this movie so I’m not sure where that title comes from. It must be an expression of some kind. May be it means “stupid man.”
Ostensibly this could have been a sharp tale about self-destructive obsessive love. Or it could have been about the parasitic Venus-flytrap sort of woman as portrayed by Denueve. It seems to be two competing movies where she pulls off her role way better than Belmondo does. And the third movie — sort of a Princess Bride-esque one about finding “true love” — is stuffed in there as well.
The only thing we know for sure is that the private investigator was fortunate because he got out fairly soon. The characters are interesting and you want to find out what is going to happen to them even as the movie itself is lame, the dialogue often comically so. There’s this weird synergy of the stupid and the traffic-accident, the kind you slow down for on the highway just to see what happened.
One reviewer wrote “Fundamentally flawed script borders on being very dumb.” I’m thinking, “Just borders on being dumb? I think it’s crossed the Swiss Alps and has moved on into Austria.”
DeneuveCam
A twice-topless (hey, that’s at least something) Catherine Deneuve plays Julie Roussel/Marion Vergano, a mail-order bride for Louis Mahé (played stiffly and stupidly by Jean-Paul Belmond0).
Deneuve is smoking’ hot throughout this while mostly keeping her clothes on. French movie or not, this is a very tame movie in that regard.
The setting is Reunion Island (off of Madagascar). Mahé owns a tobacco plantation and apparently manufactures cigarettes as well. He seems to be doing well. But he has no Deneuve in his life. (Few do.) We learn later that colonization of this island by the French was facilitated by importing prostitutes. But this comes after he marries Deneuve, so that bit of foreshadowing is out of order and certainly does him no good.
Deneuve is good in this. Belmondo is — I’m not sure what you’d call it — miscast? And yet in a way he does play to perfection a fellow who combines the traits of cluelessness and stupidity effectively. In this movie he:
+ Is a victim of an identity switch. Vergano replaces Roussel on the boat. When she arrives, she obviously doesn’t match the photo that Mahé has with him. She makes up some thin excuse. He believes her. But then would you throw Deneuve back into the sea? Probably not. Still, her story immediately isn’t matching in a number of ways.
+ Married for mere days, Mahé gives Roussel access to not only his private funds but his business funds.
+ Is promptly robbed blind by Roussel (who we learn is actually Marion Vergano). He hires a private investigator to find her (admittedly, not dumb). Then for some reason (and I’m still not sure why), he leaves Reunion Island and comes to France.
+ He checks himself into some kind of halfway house. He's distraught over being betrayed but at no point does he seem distraught. Why is he there? No one knows.
+ He then by miraculous accident runs into Marion Vergano (who had run away to France) and quickly reconciles with her instead of killing her like he apparently planned to.
+ He later (another miraculous accident by chance) runs into the private investigator he had hired to track down Vergano. He won’t quit the investigation so Mahé kills the private investigator.
+ He buries the private investigator in the basement of the villa he’s renting. (We know this won’t turn out well, and it doesn’t when a ‘chance flood’ uncovers the body.) They leave the villa and try to remain very low profile.
+ He returns to Reunion Island where he sells his business for half price in order to get the money to keep Deneuve in pretty coats. It turns out Deneuve didn’t keep the money she stole but had given it to her partner at the time, the one who (she says) tossed the real Julie Roussel over the side of the boat so that she could take his place.
+ He returns with the money and she (surprisingly) waited for him in the small rooms they were renting in Lyon. He’s got a bagful of money. He takes a few bills of pocket money before they head out the door to do whatever, leaving the bagful of money in a black overstuffed satchel on a table in the middle of the room in plain sight. Not being as stupid as Mahé, Deneuve says “Shouldn’t you maybe hide that money, stupid?” I added the "stupid" part but it seemed implied. Mahé then puts it in some nook a few feet away that any maid could find in a jiffy.
+ When they return to the apartment, it’s surrounded by the police. Mahé attempts to get the money by going in the back way. No go. Police are swarming the place — but apparently do not notice a big red convertible pulling in and out right in front of them with two people in the car. The police are stupid in this as well. It must be catching. Deneuve gives him a big “I told you not to leave the money in the room” I-told-you-so. She’s right.
+ They both go on the run and hope to make it to Switzerland. They spend some time in a small cabin close to the border. Denueve, seeing that Mahé (only now) is a dead-end for her parasitic lifestyle, begins to poison Mahé who is getting sick by degrees.
+ Despite rat poison being in abundance in the place, it isn’t until Mahé sees a cartoon in the newspaper about Sleeping Beauty being poisoned by an apple that he gets it into his head that Deneuve is poisoning him. (You have to see this scene to fully comprehend the idiocy of it. But then that was at least half the entertainment value.)
+ Of course, now he finally gets his gumption up and strangles her to death. Roll credits.
+ Except, that’s not what he does. He tells her that he knows that she is poisoning him and, well, go ahead and fill to the brim (I’m not making this up) my coffee cup with your poisoned brew. I love you anyway.
+ He again takes her back. And she suddenly says she’s sorry and reunites with him as well.
I know I’ve left out some stupid stuff. But that’s still a lot. Although it goes without saying that a man could lose his head over Catherine Deneuve, there is no back story to this Mahé fellow that suggests he is anything other than a shrewd businessman and manager. But then as the movie progresses, we wonder how he could ever manage his breakfast, let alone a huge plantation and cigarette factory.
In the end, as they take off in the deep snow toward the Swiss border, we’re left guessing about their fate. Deneuve thought that the Swiss border was in this direction but he says, no, it’s in this other direction and they walk off in that direction. There is an implication that he may be dooming them both to death-by-frostbite as an intentional way to end their sad agony. But it could just as easily be death-by-stupidity. We will never know. Thankfully they never made a sequel.
I know this all sounds horrible, and it is. But its written in such a way that it does maintain your interest. And as far as I can tell there is no Mississippi River and no mermaid in this movie so I’m not sure where that title comes from. It must be an expression of some kind. May be it means “stupid man.”
Ostensibly this could have been a sharp tale about self-destructive obsessive love. Or it could have been about the parasitic Venus-flytrap sort of woman as portrayed by Denueve. It seems to be two competing movies where she pulls off her role way better than Belmondo does. And the third movie — sort of a Princess Bride-esque one about finding “true love” — is stuffed in there as well.
The only thing we know for sure is that the private investigator was fortunate because he got out fairly soon. The characters are interesting and you want to find out what is going to happen to them even as the movie itself is lame, the dialogue often comically so. There’s this weird synergy of the stupid and the traffic-accident, the kind you slow down for on the highway just to see what happened.
One reviewer wrote “Fundamentally flawed script borders on being very dumb.” I’m thinking, “Just borders on being dumb? I think it’s crossed the Swiss Alps and has moved on into Austria.”
Still, you almost have to see it to believe it. Well, maybe don’t see it.
DeneuveCam
