Summary
Whilst helping his friend out in his job as a door-to-door salesman, a young layabout
and petty criminal Oliver meets Ariane, apparently a respectable middle-class woman
who lives alone. Through Ariane, the two men learn that the owner of the flat below
hers is away on holiday, so they decides to break in. To their surprise, the flat
is far from empty. It is filled with kinky outfits and sado-masochistic equipment…
Their escape is barred by a ferocious looking dog. Then Ariane makes a stately entrance,
decked up in tight-fitting leather. For Olivier, it is love at first sight.
For Ariane, it is the beginning of an upsetting emotional conflict...
Review
Barbet Schroeder’s film Maîtresse has enjoyed some fair notoriety in its
time, suffering pretty severely ay the hands of the critics when it was first released
(like most French erotica from this period). However, it has much more to do with
conventional love between unconventional people than with sado-masochistic eroticism (although
the latter certainly gets plenty of airing in the film).
The pairing of Gérard Depardieu (then very early into his illustrious film career)
with the stunning Bulle Ogier is indefinably effective, Depardieu’s laid back nonchalence
playing off Ogier’s uneasy dominatrix posturing to great effect.
Although the film is explicit in its depiction of sado-masochism (in spite of the censors’
minor cuts), it is hardly shocking and approaches the subject from a very dry comic perspective.
Viewed in the right frame of mind, this is an outrageously camp and funny film, although
throughout the humour is played down, creating an uneasy feeling of suspenseful ambiguity.
In spite of the bizarreness of the setting and Ariane’s apparent unfathomability, the
love story is handled very convincingly, in typically true French fashion. A rewarding,
albeit somewhat disorientating, cinematic experience.
© James Travers 2000
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