Bluebeard (Saturday, August 7, 2010) (96)

Catherine Breillat is one of the most interesting contemporary feminist filmmakers working today. Her 2001 film Fat Girl (A Ma Soeur, en francais) remains one of the most interesting works of the aughts and one of the most powerful works on feminine sexual liberation, jealousy and vengeance.


Here, in her adaptation of the Bluebeard fairytale (which she adapted and directed) she gives another fascinating portrayal of ownership and possession of female sexuality, femininity and freedom. She does this not only on a story level with the script, but also beautifully integrates formal, technical elements to this too. Bluebeard is as much an essay on the use of color and the power of color as it is about the power of gender and traditional sex roles.


The traditional story of Bluebeard (as written by Charles Perrault) is that there is an ugly, rich man who lives in a lavish castle. He marries a series of girls who are never heard from again. One day he goes to a neighbor lady and tells them that he'd like to marry one of her two daughters; the younger girl decides to marry him, despite the fact that he is incredibly ugly (and has a blue beard!).


As the story goes, he gives her a key to a secret room and tells her not to go into it. She's not able to not see what is forbidden so she goes in and finds the bloody bodies of all his previous brides. When he discovers that she disobeyed him, he insists on killing her too (clearly this is how her predecessors met their ends as well).


In the context of this film, however, that traditional story is shown to us by a more modern girl (maybe from the 1930s or 1940s) reading the story to her older sister. In other words, you have two different levels of sisters and two levels of sisterly jealousy spanning centuries. Interestingly it is never obvious which story is the framing story and which one is the story within the story. At times they are both either the primary or secondary stories.


This is very important - especially how it relates to the growth of the girls' views of sexuality (even as preadolescents). In one moment the old and new stories merge, suggesting the modern younger sister is liberating herself by seeing herself in the fairy tale. (Does "self-liberation" have to necessarily mean masturbation if it involves a prepubescent girl? I really don't know.)


Breillat uses color here beautifully. Cinematographer (and Emir Kusurica alumnus) Vilko Filac does a wonderful job of giving the film a very muted color palette. It almost looks like what technicolor films from the 1960s and 1970s have come to look when shown today. It is colorful but somewhat muddied and gray overall. Still, within this more somber color scheme, bold colors stand out - and convey power.


Clearly Bluebeard has power because his beard is, well, blue. But beyond this, when the brown-haired younger sister becomes his wife, she puts aside the black smocks her mother has dressed her in after her father's death and puts on a brightly colored red cape and a green silk gown. (Interestingly it is her older red-haired sister who is the most vocal against the convention of wearing black for mourning; the younger sister is rewarded for her conventionality with a shower of color and freedom).


I love that both the Bluebeard story and the more modern story feature sisters with red and brown hair respectively. In the former, it is the older sister who has red hair and is generally more free-thinking; her younger brunette sister is more aloof. In the latter, the younger sister is red-headed, but has more power than her older, brunette sister and takes a dominant role. This back-and-forth is very reminiscent of the relationship between the sisters in Fat Girl, a discussion about sisterly jealousy and the power of sexuality.


The simplicity and economy of the film is also very refreshing. Clocking in at a mere 81 minutes, the film opens a world of interesting debate about the role of female sexuality in the feminist world of today. There is only a minimal score and Breillat beautifully uses the repetition of shots (showing one shot three consecutive times) to show the passage of time or movement across space - almost in a dream state.


The story is highly symbolic (as is the fairy tale, I'm sure). With the "keys" to the "doors of the castle" Bluebeard gives to his young bride being very overt symbols for her own sexual identity and expression. He respects the young bride because she reacts to him in a non-submissive fashion - almost a masculine view and knowledge of things. The young wife becomes a proto-feminist by embracing her self-ness, showing him that she will control her own sexuality, rather than letting him defile her at his own whim. The unwashable blood on the key she drops in his secret room is clearly blood from her auto-defloration.


The more modern sisters act as a Greek Chorus here - but a very contemporary chorus, despite the more mid-century clothing they wear. There are moments of their part where it almost appears to be documentary-like. It's not clear to me if everything these girls say is scripted or if it might be two young women in the present day talking about sexual and social mores - through the eyes of children.


At one moment, one girl mentions that "marriage" between a man and a woman is something of a "homosexual" act. That marriage is about self-love rather than love of one another. That marriage is in its essence a non-sexual pact, but a narcissistic or masturbatory one. (I wonder if this idea works better in the context of the French reflexive verb construct, s'aimer.)


I think it's important to remember that this film is a feminist appraisal of sexuality by a woman through the prism of the male gaze - Breillat is showing us how men see women sexually. Considering this, there is a good chance that the "girls" in the film are not really girls at all, but the slanted male view of sexual women. Throughout our culture women are infantilized and reduced, particularly in sexual ways (here Bluebeard makes his wife sleep in a child's toy bed).


Women do not own their sexuality the same way that children are not responsible for their actions. I think it's entirely possible that the girls in the film are really grown women in control of their sexual destinies who are seen by men as silly girls with no understanding of things. Breillat shows us directly what society thinks of women - that they're all just "girls." (This would also make the concept of masturbation easier to understand.)


Near the end of the film, Breillat invokes the Salome story and suggests that female sexual liberty threatens men with decapitation or castration. This is really interesting to me. She says that for women the devil you know (sexual liberation) is better than the devil you don't know (sexual repression). The young wife is not afraid of Bluebeard because she is sexually open and interested. Were she a more traditional girl of the era, she would be scared of him because he represents raw sexual power.


Stars: 4 of 4