La dérobade aka The Life: Memories of a French Whore (1979) Hooker Reality Woman's Noir

Directed by Daniel Duval. 

Written by Christopher Frank, adapted by Daniel Duval from Jeanne Cordelier's memoirs "La dérobade" The beautiful Cinematography was by Michel Cénet (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) Music by Vladimir Cosma (Diva)

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

"Statistics show that over 85 % of violent crimes are committed by men. Women account for 14% of violent crime but out of that 14% , 3 out of 4 of those offenses are for simple assault and 28 % of those assaults are committed by juveniles.  

Realistic Noir about women and Crime are not going to be about women toting guns around. Women are arrested for larceny, drug possession, forgery, fraud, embezzling, shoplifting, bunco (con artists), prostitution, lewd behavior, and drunk driving. (The total equals a rate of about 1 woman involved with the criminal justice system for every 109 adult women in the U.S. population. - Bureau of Justice Statistics - Special Report)

The story the film is based on is from the memoirs of its author, Jeanne Cordelier a former Paris prostitute. It was Miou-Miou who got the production rolling, seeing herself in the title role. It was she who chose Daniel Duval as the director, from the strength of his first two films. The film was a huge success, Miou-Miou won the 1980 César for Best Actress. Maria Schneider was also nominated for best supporting actress, and Vladimir Cosma was a 1980 César nominee for Best Music. How come we never hear about it?

Miou-Miou as Marie

The film stars Miou-Miou (Going Places)  as Marie, Daniel Duval as Gérard, Maria Schneider (Last Tango In Paris) as Maloup. 

Daniel Duval as Gérard

Maria Schneider as Maloup

With Niels Arestrup as André, Jean Benguigui as Jean-Jean, Martine Ferrière as Madame Pedro, Brigitte Ariel as Odette, Marie Pillet as Lulu, Régis Porte as François, Isabelle Mergault as a Prostitute, Jean-Claude Dreyfus (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, and Brigitte Sy.

The Story

Paris - The film opens with an old woman dragging a wooden chair across the lawn outside of a Paris tenement. She places it near the edge of the side walk and sits down. We slowly pan from her back to the housing project and up to a window, and through the curtain.

Beyond the curtain and in the  room are nineteen year old Marie and her fiancé. They just finished having sex. He's going into the service. He gives her his photo of himself in uniform, while she buttons up her blouse. 

1972 Motobécane AV 88

We cut to back outside the projects. The boyfriend starts his 1972 Motobécane AV 88 scooter, Marie hops on the bare metal parcel rack behind the seat. He takes her to the Marionette Bar. She hops off and starts to walk inside almost forgetting to kiss him. In the bar are her father and Gérard playing a game of cards along with other bar patrons at the table by the floor stove. 

Marie comes in and sits on her fathers lap. He nonchalantly gropes her breast while looking at his hand. It's obviously not a normal father-daughter relationship from the get go. And that's the clue. However, we switch immediately to a love at first sight sequence as Gérard and Marie lock eyes. They obviously like what each other sees. 

We zoom to Marie and cue Cosma's title tune and this starts the title sequence which is obviously conveying a fairy tale looking love story. A dropping drawbridge reveals a red '67 Ford Mustang. Marie and Gérard in the French equivalent of a pimp mobile. More titles appear as we are cruising through the farms and fields of the French countryside. 

This greatly contrasts with Marie's fiancé and his AV 88, with her ass sitting on bare metal. 

They end up making love at the top of a Normandie cliff. We see Marie ripping up up her fiancé's photo as a small skiff on the ocean appears to be disappearing into the mists. Is it a metaphor?

We cut to Marie at her shoe clerk job when the title sequence finally ends. She is about to serve a customer and gets interrupted by Gérard who taps on the plate glass window. 

When she gets off work she hops into Gérard's Mustang. Gérard convinces her to give up her clerk job and to become a cigarette girl / prostitute in Le Texan a dive bar. 

At this point you may be saying to yourself WTF? What we don't realize at first is that she sees prostitution as just another job. Her older sister is already a prostitute and to her ghetto family and neighbors, it's just another way to make money.

We cut to "Le Texan" a subterranean western themed clip joint with a very different looking Marie. She's on the job in makeup, earrings, with a red neckerchief around her neck, wearing a tight revealing white blouse with no bra, "points of her own sitting way up high," catching the eyes of customers. 

A partially bald business man catches the eye of the female bartender with a Harpo Marx do, and he indicates that he wants Marie.

She passes the message to Marie. She tells the bartender that she doesn't know where to go. The bartender assures her telling her not to worry, he does. Must be a regular.

They head up stairs and out to the street he becomes Marie's first trick.

Her first trick

When the deed is done, Marie heads off to look for her sister a streetwalker. It's a nicely filmed sequence where she heads into a red light district and waits in a sort of North African / Eastern Mediterranean ethnic lunch counter. She sits and watches through the plate glass window the entrance to the hot sheet hotel across the street.

When her sister appears back in the entrance she runs out to tell her the news. Big sis has been in on it all, first steps, first tooth, first words, first day of school, first communion, first trick.....

She goes back to Gérard's apartment. Marie tells him that the bar makes her uncomfortable so he suggests that she instead she try working in a brothel. 

The nest day Gérard drives her over to Madame Pedro's house of ill repute. Madame Pedro looks her over and tells her that her working name will be Sophie.  

The introduction sequence between Marie / Sophie to the girls at Casa Pedro is to a music box-ish theme. The gals size up the newbie,

 It's here when she sits on the bench seat, where Marie meets Maloup who is about her same age, and they become fast friends.

Marie sits next to Maloup in the "show room."

We get some examples throughout the films of some of the weird kinks of some of Marie's customers. One guy, for example just likes to be berated by her.  She is making money but is too tired on her days off for enthusiastic sex with Gérard. 

When she returns to the house after her time with Gérard she finds a strange man waiting in a hallway. When Marie starts to chat him up he brings out his police identification and arrests her. 

At police headquarters she gets booked but does not reveal the name of her pimp. She now has a record. 

Busted

Marie clowns for her mug shot vamping the cameraman.

When she finally gets back to Gérard's flat, he's not there; he soon calls, asking for their "nest egg" so to speak. He's lost at cards big and his "hosts" will not let him depart until he pays them off. 

Gérard sends her back to the bar to build back their losses. We get another session with another timid john who in his gratitude, giver her a note paper with his address and phone number, if she needs any help. She takes the paper and puts it in her raincoat. 

Back at Gérard's flat he again complains about Marie having no libido. He starts slapping Marie around to the point that she grabs a pair of scissors and is prepared to stab him with them. 

She grabs her raincoat and runs out of the flat. She runs to her sisters crib. She bursts in on her having sex, he john runs out, and Marie breaks down telling her her troubles.

She grabs her raincoat and runs out of the flat. She runs to her sisters crib. She bursts in on her having sex, he john runs out, and Marie breaks down telling her her troubles with Gérard.

Gérard comes by the Marionette Bar makes up with Marie and talks her into going to Deauville. He can gamble she can pull tricks. 

Marie works a "riding academy" dive in Deauville that has a big Eyeball as its front

Back in Paris it starts to do Noirsville when Marie and Maloup decide to fix up a crib and go into business for themselves. Fuck the bordello and Gérard. 

At a meeting Marie arranges in a restaurant she introduces Odette to Gérard to take her place.

Brigitte Ariel as Odette

Now in business for themselves Marie and Maloup start out trolling the Bois de Boulogne for johns. 

A car drives up. He says his name is André. André wants the both of them. They take him back to their crib where he screws the both of them for three hours straight and then trashes their crib. 

Trashing the crib.

After he walks out of the crib he straightens his tie and stops at a Mercedes and knock on its top, when the camera view drops down we see Gérard sitting in the front seat.

It was all set up by Gérard.

Noirsville

Martine Ferrière as Madame Pedro

This is another un glamorized story of the life of a prostitute. 

Directed masterfully by Daniel Duval and lensed with some excellent Visual Style by Michel Cénet.

Miou-Miou deserved her Caesar, her physical performances in her brutal confrontations with Duval are riveting, these are juxtaposed with a complete range of various emotions that are quite convincing. Maria Schneider, the rest of the cast, and the score by Cosma complement the whole. 

It fits in with films like Aroused, Fleshpot On 42nd Street, Whore, Ta Kokkina Fanaria, ,Víctimas del pecado, Passport To Shame, and  Aventurera Bravo 8/10

"...the daily life of sex workers and their relationships with their pimps, a hard and unpleasant film which shakes up quite a bit, describing with honesty and lucidity an infamous environment whose atmosphere is probably very well rendered thanks to the experience of Jeanne Cordelie. With a cold, detached, implacable treatment, and without excessive drama, this is a powerful, difficult, brutal testimony, but also an essential chronicle supported by a very successful score by Vladmir Cosma - whose melancholy allows us, as a counterpoint, not to be too suffocated by the very dark atmosphere of this harsh film. La Dérobade is carried on its own by its main actress, wonderfully supported by a whole host of excellent supporting roles, from Daniel Duval to Maria Schneider, including Jean Benguigui, Jean-Claude Dreyfuss and Niels Arestrup, who were at the very beginning of their careers. A daring film at the time and which did not receive the support it deserved from critics. It is time to reassess it."

From DVDClassik - Critique de film - full review (in French) here