Barbe Bleue (2009) - 4/4

Literal

Catherine Breillat's Barbe Bleue occurs on two levels of narrative. On the first level, the present day, a precocious little girl is reading the Bluebeard story to her older, "girlier" sister and delighting in both shocking and frightening her with the details. On the second level is the Bluebeard story itself, a gorgeous and realistic period melodrama about the young bride of a murderous aristocrat. It is told with such detail that it could not possibly be a mere representation of what the little girl--however precocious--is telling her sister. For instance, Bluebeard teaches his bride the Latin names of various fungi and Chinese records of solar eclipses. So we're seeing the legend itself unfold as a real historical event while the little girl reads the original Charles Perrault tale.

Most of the screentime is taken up by the Bluebeard story seen from the point of view of the young bride, Marie-Catherine. We first meet her arriving late for a meeting with Mother Superior, where she's told her father has died and that she and her sister Anne are now too poor to stay at the convent school. Their mother laments that they're even too poor to marry off, having no dowry. For better or worse, the man in the enormous castle nearby, the infamous Bluebeard, whose wives all mysteriously disappear, is now looking for a new wife. He and Marie-Catherine find kindred spirits in one another despite their many differences. They're both highly intelligent loners who find a sort of freedom-to-be with each other. So they marry and he eventually charges her with the key to his secret room, which she must never enter, but which she enters anyway. That's the Bluebeard legend.

Breillat's approach to the fairytale resembles Rossellini's La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV in its attention to detail, realism, and quiet tableaux. There is no musical score, except the occasional piece played by a character. All one hears are the sounds of birds, the wind, characters breathing, eating, and of course speaking. I so enjoyed being left to feel each scene on my own; being free to feel the space, the environment, the presences without distraction. Breillat's camera movements, lighting and long takes increase this feeling. The camera often turns around characters, usually a good 90-degrees, impressing upon me the sense of being-there. These people are not in a frame; they're in a world. When Bluebeard and Marie-Catherine go for a walk, I could feel what it is like for them to walk together, to spend time together, to be where they are as they are.

This brings us to the emotional heart of the film. Bluebeard and Marie-Catherine form a strangely beautiful relationship. Where she is virginal and innocent, somehow untouched by a world of norms and conventions, she has this inner strength. And where Bluebeard is a worldly, rich aristocrat, he has this vulnerability. When they first meet, the corpulent Bluebeard is reclining against a tree, a huge presence; but Marie-Catherine, tiny as she is, stands over him and seems to dominate him in the scene. The biggest close-up in the film occurs at this point, shooting her face from a low angle. She dominates not by anything she says, but merely by spirit, for lack of a better word. When he makes the mistake of putting her bed at the foot of his, like a dog she claims, he says pathetically, "I thought I was doing the right thing." He, however, admires her honesty and she admires his. They seem eager to please one another. They are both intelligent, individualistic people who like their space. These two loners seem to belong together, alone in their tower. Their moments together are so quiet, so intimate. He likes to teach her things; she likes to learn. He likes talking; she likes listening to him. Bluebeard has this incredible, gentle voice that sounds like he's ever speaking a soft 'good night', so it's not a wonder. Their relationship is a tender one, so peaceful that its coming to an end is all the more upsetting.

The girls reading the story also have an interesting relationship. The scenes with them are amusing, even laugh-out-loud funny, as they offer innocent, yet significance-laden commentary on the story. Like when the younger one, Marie-Anne, seems to think married couples become homosexuals. Does she know what that word means? It's not clear. I have no idea how Breillat did it, but it looks as they the conversation between them really happened and wasn't an act at all. It's impossible, but it has that spontanaeity.

Allegorical

The first shot and final shot of the film depict the same thing: a seated woman with a man's decapitated head before her. There are many possible significances. Is it female empowerment? That simplistic notion doesn't seem to give Breillat the credit she deserves. Yet, the film does concern certain socioeconomic issues affecting women historically. Anne reacts fiercely to the suggestion of being sent to a convent for lacking a dowry. Christianity was without a doubt the fiercest oppressor of individuality, especially female individuality. Her father might be dead, but does that mean she must be a living dead? she asks. Anne consequently resents her father for dying. Marie-Catherine is unconcerned and seems convinced she can become rich, but of course the only way she can do this is by marrying a rich man. So she marries Bluebeard, who takes advantage of the socioeconomic system to find new wives. The woman in the first image holds a quill, and certainly female education is the major step toward triumphing over socioeconomic oppression.

On another level, Anne seems resigned to the conditions she finds herself in, though she's not happy about it. Marie-Catherine, on the other hand, pretends these conditions and conventions don't exist. She would rather play with insects beside a pond than dance with the boys at Bluebeard's bride-picking party. She doesn't seem to doubt for a moment that she can become rich if she wants to. It doesn't bother her that Bluebeard isn't a conventionally attractive man. Arbitrary rules, like "Don't go into the secret room," were made to be broken by spirits like Marie-Catherine. As I see it, it is arbitrary rules and conventions that is triumphed over in the first and final images, whatever the cost. It is arbitrariness I regarded with the most horror after seeing Barbe Bleue.

Then there are the two girls reading the story, Marie-Anne and Catherine. Catherine, the elder of the two, is easily frightened by the Bluebeard story, wears pigtails, and thinks of marriage as two people falling in love forever and getting a gold ring. She has a totally conventional mind. She didn't want to enter the attic where the book is kept because it's forbidden. Marie-Anne, however, is adventurous, imagines alternative possibilities in marriage: perhaps the wife becomes an ogress, or perhaps they all turn homosexual. She doesn't care if she gets her dress dirty. She's clearly the more intelligent. Ultimately the universe of the story privileges her and punishes the conventional Catherine, though I won't say how.

Moral

There is a single close-up of Marie-Catherine in Barbe Bleue that without a doubt references Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. One of the most fascinating historical facts for me seems to have caught the interest of Catherine Breillat as well: the original Bluebeard, Gilles de Rais, was a friend and comrade-in-arms of Joan of Arc. One of the vilest serial killers in history was a companion of one of the most famous virgins. No-one is pure evil. Marie-Catherine seems to find all that's good in Bluebeard and in her innocence controls the ogre. She accepts him. She prefers it when he doesn't dye his beard black. She's both interested and repulsed by his corpulent body. The differences in their bodies are almost a physical representation of the differences within. Marie-Catherine comments at one point that he will "always be too big" for her.

At the same time, Marie-Catherine's comment hints toward a virginal anxiety about the male body. One's mind cannot but be led to the sexual implications of the phrase 'too big.' Marie-Catherine does not want to entertain the notion of the impending marital consummation. In Bluebeard's secret room, she drops the key in blood and it continues bleeding. Her curiosity is rewarded with anxiety and the threat of destruction. Breillat, however, does not punish her curiosity as the traditional story does. This is not even to touch on Marie-Catherine's odd attitudes toward death: she tells her dead father he is more handsome in death than in life. She seems to find more comfort in sterile bodies than virile ones.

When Marie-Catherine first hears about Bluebeard's murders, she wonders how it's possible he's not in prison. The more worldly and cynical Anne comments that a rich man can do what he likes to women: that is justice, not blind at all. Marie-Catherine refuses to accept this verdict. It's possible she plans justice in some fashion. The final image of the film brings to mind Lucas Cranach the Elder's Judith with the Head of Holofernes. Perhaps Marie-Catherine envisioned risking herself to get justice when she watched the beheaded duck flop to dead on the castle grounds. Like Joan of Arc, she is not just a virgin, but a sort of warrior. How manipulative and self-interested she is is not clear. After all, Lucas Cranach's Salome with the Head of John the Baptist is very similar to his Judith. To this end, there is some resemblance to Paul Verhoeven's Flesh+Blood.

There is another interesting point to take away from Barbe Bleue. The little girls in this film are some very fascinating and complex characters. Marie-Catherine, Marie-Anne, and Anne are rich characters whose attitudes can't be easily predicted. It's easy to dismiss children, especially little girls, as being merely cute and not worth taking seriously. But they can have highly-developed inner lives. Given the opportunity they can form meaningful non-sexual relationships with adults of either sex. At the very least we should listen to what they have to say and not impose our decrepit conventional attitudes on them.

Anagogical

There is, finally, the issue of the names. The girls reading Bluebeard are named Marie-Anne and Catherine. The girl who marries Bluebeard is Marie-Catherine and her sister is Anne. The director is named Catherine. This overlap is of course intentional. Despite the misleading distribution of the names, I get the impression Marie-Anne is the surrogate of Catherine Breillat, not Catherine. Like Breillat, Marie-Anne is spinning the story; and like Breillat, her inventive mind delights in subverting expectations. Like Marie-Anne delights in shocking her sister, Breillat takes some pleasure in shocking her audience. The nearly pedophilic marriage is, after all, rather shocking. There are even bigger shocks as the film develops. That's one level.

The next level is that Marie-Anne, the Breillat surrogate, gives herself a surrogate in the character of Marie-Catherine. But she separates her name. She calls Marie-Catherine's sister Anne. And Marie-Anne's own sister is Catherine. As if she's absorbed her sister in herself, wants to take over her sister's position in the family. Marie-Catherine tells Bluebeard at one point that everything in her house was set up for her sister and she had to share it. In some sense, Bluebeard offers a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the younger sister. Incidentally, Breillat has an older sister that she liked to read scary stories to as well.

Most fascinating of all is the incredible discovery-scene, the scene in which Bluebeard's secret office is entered. For this scene, instead of Marie-Catherine we see Marie-Anne exploring the blood-soaked room, repeating to herself, "I am not afraid." So we have at least two levels of wish-fulfillment here. Creative people who read fairytales imagine themselves in the situation, expand it, develop it into a more realistic world where they inhabit and can act out much more complicated responses, avoid the mistakes made by the fairytale heroines. In this scene we have the character reading herself into the story as perhaps Breillat did as a child and when writing the screenplay and as I was doing earlier in the film. It is a way of engaging with fiction, to fantasize about it; and to use those fantasies to deal with our personal issues. It's one of the most original and fascinating explorations of the relationship between fiction and reality I've ever seen in a film. I've only scratched the surface.

"I've only scratched the surface." That's true in general. As I've shown here, Barbe Bleue works on many, many layers. I have only pointed in a few of the most interesting directions and demonstrated a few possible ways to follow these avenues of thought. This film deserves to have a very healthy afterlife in one's mind and in several rewatchings.