La Marge - director Walerian Borowczyk France 1976

La Marge for your review.

LA MARGE, in a way, can be viewed as Borowczyk's last effort to really score a hit with an almost mainstream film. Having seen this film on the big screen upon release (uncut at the Screen On The Green), it was my introduction to Borowczyk. It was based on a well known novel by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues (whose work Borowczyk would film five times), it would be scored with some of the seventies biggest musical acts (including 10CC, Elton John and Pink Floyd) and it would star an actress who two years before had become the biggest box office draw in French cinema, Sylvia Kristel who called LA MARGE her favorite role she ever did in her autobiography. It is a seminal role in it and she is breathtakingly good in the film. Also starring Joe Dallesandro who had stayed on in Europe after travelling over with Paul Morrissey and crew a few years earlier for FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and BLOOD FOR DRACULA and he, like Kristel, was becoming more and more in demand for some of Europe's top directors. He had just come off films with Louis Malle and Serge Gainsbourg when he stepped in front of Borowczyk's camera to deliver, what I consider, his greatest performance. Also joining Borowczyk was cinematographer Bernard Daillencourt who had previously collaborated on both IMMORAL TALES and THE BEAST, so he was no stranger to Borowczyk's striking painterly like compositional style. (1)

If La Bête demonised Borowczyk with most critics, the 1970s films which followed ensured that they would never forgive him. The critical savaging Borowczyk endured had to do with one thing: Borowczyk had exercised his right as an artist to discuss what interested him, in this case sex, and to show its many representations. The critics saw it another way, accusing Borowczyk of sexploitation and “art-porn”. Some even attacked him for making erotic films that weren’t erotic! (2)

spoilers ahead


The plot of LA MARGE is simple. A businessman leaves his country home, and wife and young son for a business trip to Paris. While there he develops a sexual and spiritual bond with a call girl. When he gets word from home that his son has accidentally downed and his wife has killed herself, his world begins to completely crumble around him. The plot is the least of LA MARGE'S many virtues. Like all of Borowczyk's works, LA MARGE reminds an audience of film's capability to give the moving image an undeniable soul. Everything from his angles, to the way he shoots Kristel and Dallesandro during their love scenes show Borowczyk as being among the great cinema stylists in history. From the filming of Dallesandro's and Kristel's feet during one of their lovemaking session, to the sad elderly maid who spends her evenings staring through couple's keyholes, to the unsettling confrontations between Kristel and her abusive John, an audience rushing the stage to roll a boiled egg and cigarettes over the semi-naked body of a female cabaret performer at the climax of her act - the film is filled with moments that continue to haunt.

Two major musical moments of the film are Charles Dumont's lovely UNE FEMME, which plays in its entirety through the film's key love scene, and the daring use of Pink Floyd's majestic Syd Barrett tribute SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND during the film's heartbreaking climax. Borowczyk brings both of these songs to the forefront during their scenes, but other songs like 10CC's LAZY WAYS and Elton John's SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALL RIGHT play slightly underneath as if they are being heard from another room (or perhaps more precisely in only one of the characters heads). Another key song is I'M NOT IN LOVE, also by 10CC. This gorgeous and innovative track has been damaged over the years by being overplayed so much, but join me if you will in revisiting this lovely piece of British pop as Walerian Borowczyk would have heard it back in 1975 when he was filming LA MARGE. Even Sailor's A GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE puts an upbeat spin on 'the life goes on ending'. (1)

The ending of this movie is in the process not the outcome - there is no happy ending. Diana flees from her last session with Sigimond in post-fellatio because she's realized that she's fallen in love with him and is frightened he'll notice by the change in her sex-making. Later Sigimond shoots himself because the feelings he's developed for Diana made him feel unfaithful to Sergine's memory. The key thing to remember is that LA MARGE is a love story. However, it is very abstract in how it seeks to unravel their courtship ritual. There is a misconception that Sigimond is cheating on his wife or had been cheating on his wife. That view is entirely the opposite of the filmmaker's intention as Sigimond is still entirely devoted to his wife. Note that the super-hot hotel maid tries to tempt him into putting a move on her without success at least three times. Diana, on the other hand, won't fall in love either for the usual professional reasons, her jaded mercenary demeanor is what convinces Sigimond to keep going back to her as she seems to be the character opposite of his late wife, Sergine.

The look of the production is rich, filmed in primarily garish colours. The costumes, especially Kristel's wardrobe, which is entirely black, are elegant. The nudity is often blunt, with many shots of naked bodies filmed from the neck down, lending a voyeuristic feel to some scenes. Director Borowczyk lets the camera pan slowly down the bodies of his actors, leering at their nudity. This style occasionally lends the film a slightly pornographic feel. But this is in no way pornographic, as from start to finish, every scene is artfully filmed, paying great attention to little details. (3)