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May 14, 2008
"Le bon dieu sans confession" : happy funeral. (2/8)
« Le bon dieu sans confession » opens on a bourgeois funeral. The attendance is scarce in the church. The camera focuses on the deceased’s wife. In voice over, she starts to tell us her version of what happened, triggering the first of the film flashbacks.
We shall hear and watch several additional testimonies. The flashbacks will sometimes play daringly with chronology : some scenes shall only make sense retrospectively, after watching later ones which nevertheless took place earlier story-wise.
The film feeds us information at a severely controlled pace and keeps us under a very strict diet for our own good. We are long left hungry, in a delightful state of expectations. We initially feel a bit lost and greatly enjoy it. We wonder who the main character really is, but still ignore this ambiguity will play to the end of the film.
A story line progressively appears. François Dupont (Henri Vilbert) is a well-off business man with a working class background. His wife’s money got him started. Their couple is a sensible, unromantic arrangement which seems to satisfy both.
François Dupont and his partner, Varesco (Grégoie Aslan), are no business tycoons : they make good money with an import-export business, as short on glamour as their company modest offices in a popular neighbourhood of Paris.
François Dupont meets Janine Frejoul (Danielle Darrieux), an attractive young woman, through her husband, Maurice (Ivan Desny), a charming loser, who has pitched a business proposal at the no-nonsense trader.
Maurice and Janine Frejoul live in Janine’s beautiful family estate near Paris, in aristocratic grandeur, but money is running short : they can no longer cover the bills.
Like François Dupont, Maurice Frejoul married money, but only as a collateral of love. Money is gone, love remains, on both sides : he is madly jealous of his wife, so far with no reason.
As François Dupont and his partner refuse to go along with Maurice Frejoul’s project, Janine sets on seducing the business man. She easily succeeds, to her husband’s weak protest : he has no alternative to offer, she is the strong-minded one.
Janine Frejoul wants François Dupont’s money, but will not pay the usual price for it. She makes a convincing case their love is too pure to be stained by adultery ; she shall not be his lover until he leaves his wife ; he shall not leave his family until his children have grown up.
François Dupont is a principled man : Janine’s moral « scruples » charm as much as frustrate him, he gives in.
A lovely affair develops, fully platonic, except that François now pays all of Janine’s bills with nearly sexual pleasure.
This is sublimation at its best and a biting piece of social satire, in the line of Renoir’s « La règle du jeu » or Christian-Jaque’s « Un revenant » ; Claude Autant-Lara directs it with indisputable panache.
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