La Sirène du Mississipi aka Mississippi Mermaid (1969) French Film Soleil Noir

"Woolrich à la française"

Directed by François Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player (1960).

Written by François Truffaut and based on the Cornell Woolrich novel Waltz Into Darkness (written under the penname William Irish). Cinematography was by Denys Clerval and the Music by Antoine Duhamel.

The film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as tobacco plantation owner / cigarette manufacturer Louis Mahé, Catherine Deneuve as Julie Roussel / Marion Vergano. Michel Bouquet as Private Detective Comolli, Nelly Borgeaud as Berthe Roussel, Marcel Berbert as Jardine, Martine Ferrière as the Landlady, Yves Drouhet as the Police Detective and Roland Thénot as Richard.

The story

The title sequence has the personal column page of a newspaper & voices. Male and female, reading the "lonely hearts" columns. They rise to a cacophony of overlapping babble.

Southern Hemisphere. Indian Ocean. The Mascarene Islands.

Réunion Island

Jean-Paul Belmondo as Louis Mahé,

Louis Mahé. First class chump. Réunion Island tobacco grower has managed acquire the modern version of a mail order bride through the classifieds. Drab, mousey, brunette Julie Roussel. She is supposed to arrive on an island hopping ship named Mississipi (the French spelled it with only one "p"). His business partner has a wife and kids. A happy home. Maybe he feels he's loosing a race. He practices introducing Julie as his wife to his friends in the mirror. She is what he thinks he wants.

Julie Roussel

Island Hopping French ship Mississipi (Fr. spelling)

Louis gets all spiffed up hops in his 1959 Peugeot 403 convertible and goes to meet his new brunette bride at the wharf. He watches as the ship docks clutching the photograph she sent him.

Louis' oil burning 1959 Peugeot 403 convertible needs a ring job.

He watches the ship discharges its passengers. She does not come down the gang plank. WTF? Louis heads back to his car and finds a beautiful blonde waiting. She wearing a pastel dress and a wide brimmed straw hat. She stands twirling a white tear drop shaped wicker bird cadge containing a canary in one hand.

She tells him that she is Julie, and explains that she wasn't being entirely honest and sent him a picture of her neighbor. She asks if he's disappointed? She is beautiful. He tells her no. She hops into the car, they get her baggage and drive into the interior of the island.

Just outside Louis' home he stops the car and tells Julie that he too has not been honest. He tells her that he is not a foreman at a cigarette plant but the owner of the company. Louis becomes obsessed with her.

They get married. From the get go we are tipped off in small seemingly inconsequential ways that things are not what the innocently appear. Julie didn't look like her photo. She strangely doesn't unpack a trunk she brought with her on her voyage telling Louis that she lost the key, but that its full of old things anyway. During the ceremony the ring is a bit too small for her ring finger. She takes coffee for breakfast when she wrote in a letter to Louis that she prefers tea. When her pet canary dies she seems not to be affected. She has nightmares. And she never mentioned in her letters that she can't sleep without a light on.

Louis then gets a letter from Julie's sister Berthe Roussel asking why she hasn't written. Julie explains that she's started to write Berthe numerous times but never finished the letters.

Stranger still, when Louis heads off to work one day Julie sneaks out of the house avoiding the servants. Sha catches a local island bus and meets a man at the side of the road. They get into an argument and the man slaps Julie. This confrontation is observed by Louis' business partner. But he is discrete does not mention it.

At Louis' bank, they sign the formal paperwork that creates a joint personal and business account in both Julie and Louis' names.

Papers are signed at the bank for a joint account

Cut to Louis coming home from work early one evening and finding Julie gone. He spies the un-opened trunk and grabbing a screwdriver pops open the latch. It contains women's clothes, shoes, a bible and a statue of the Virgin Mary.

WTF? Then the lightbulb goes off in his head and he realizes that he better check his accounts. He had 28 million Francs that morning.

She cleaned out everything she could. Without his signature the account could not be closed completely so and now he has a total 150,000 left. So Louis is quite distraught. He rips up and burns Julies clothes.

Not soon after Berthe arrives on the island worried about her sister. When Louis shows Berthe his wedding picture she tells him that the woman he married is not Julie. Louis and Berthe go and hire a private detective Canolli to find out what happened to the real Julie and the money. Canolli tells them he'll book passage on the Mississippi and interrogate the entire crew and get to the bottom of it.

Michel Bouquet as Private Detective Comolli studying Julie's photo

So Berthe heads off to New Caledonia while Louis flies to the South of France for a rest. While on his flight Louis drops from anxiety and exhaustion and wakes up in a clinic in Nice.

Nice, Côte d'Azur, France

Louis' sleep therapy

While recovering, Louis is sitting with the rest of the veg'd out patients watching to boob tube. A news item about the new Club Phoenix a modern sort of dime a dance nightclub in Nice. On the screen appears Julie dancing in a showgirls costume with the customers.

That gets Louis's attention. He broods. Comes up with a plan. He buys an automatic.

He stakes out the Club Phoenix and tails Julie to her flop in the Hotel Monorail.

On the selected night he watches her leave for the club and then ascends the drain pipe and scales up to the outside balcony of Julie's pad. He goes in through the window and waits for Julie's return.

When she arrives she has an admirer in tow, but she gives him the brush at the door. She sits at her make-up table. Louis approaches from behind pointing the automatic at her. He tells her that came to kill her. She tells Louis to go ahead and shoot because she is ready to die. Louis can't pull the trigger.

Julie tells Louis that her real name is Marion Vergano, but also that she is really an orphan, and that Marion was a name somebody gave her at the orphanage, and Vergano she found on a Italian postcard.

She tells him when the girls graduated they either were "completely brainwashed or completely rebellious. I threw myself into life, at fourteen I got my first high heels, a man bought them for me.,,, I got a job and began to steal the boss's change then I stole his wallet. I got sent to reform schools each one tougher than the last. We had to undress before going into the dormitory and leave our clothes out in the hall. They locked all the dormitory doors even the windows were sealed. Between the guards and the rounds we'd have masturbation contests.

The hardest part was learning how to sleep with the light on all night. I was pretty. I could manage the boys well. I could get anything I wanted until I met Richard. I was with him on the Mississipi at the same time as Julie Roussel. Richard loved big boats there was always some on game you could pull on them. So we met Julie Roussel your fiancée and she confided in me." Marion tells him that showed her the letters and even your picture. She even had you instigated and knew you owned the company. Richard planed to use her to get at your money but it was too complicated so he pushed her overboard. So I took her place.

Louis asks where is his money? She tells him basically that her pimp Richard took all the money, left her broke and dropped her. She asks him "why else would she be working as a taxi dancer."

Louis still hopelessly obsessed with Marion after all this, forgives her. They buy a car and hit the road.

They find a house to rent in the country outside of Aix-en-Provence and reacquaint with each other as those wildly in love do, wink, wink.

Marion letting loose

They set up a domestic life of sex and going of country dives and picnics, or going out to dinner at local restaurant and then a show.

Marion letting looser flashing her tits to passing motorists

So everything is good until it's not. Life for Louis and Marion go further into Noirsville when Detective Canolli shows up in the city. At a restaurant Canolli tells Louis that they found Julies body. Canolli is the "Angel Eyes" of Private Detectives he always finishes his job. When Louis tells him to stop his inquiry. Canolli reminds hi that he's also working for Julies sister and that it's now a personal matter of pride that he'll see the murderers caught and brought to justice.