Mississippi Mermaid

ryan3.0

Throwback to when it was romantic to put your wife's face on a cigarette package design.

rodrigo4.0

im just like jean-paul belmondo because i too would forgive catherine deneuve if she catfished, stole my entire fortune and poisoned me

theriverjordan3.0

François Truffaut has too pure a heart to squeeze even a guilty glee out of portraying hostile relationships. While the Nouvelle Vague icon can execute a sudden death with the best of them, he never quite reaches a proficiency in confrontation and manipulation that equals that of Godard, or his own icon; Hitchcock. “Mississippi Mermaid,” though, is Truffaut trying with all his good soul to make a noir with the grandiose ‘his and hers’ deceit of Hitchcock’s own masterpieces of manipulation: “To Catch a Thief,” “Suspicion,” and “Under Capricorn.” From “Capricorn,” the Hitchcock period drama that Nouvelle Vague auteurs rediscovered and championed, Truffaut takes the nation of exiles turned plantation owners conceit, transposing it to Réunion island. “Mermaid” pulls one clever trick though; making the wounded young woman at the work’s center - not quite as broken as she first appears. Hitchcock, though, was perhaps wise to leave a femme fatale out of the narrative drivers seat in “Capricorn.” Handing the wheel over to an archetypical seductress in “Mermaid” too quickly veers the film in a psychosis of diverging directions. Catherine Deneuve’s conwoman is simply too proficient at her craft to keep the movie on a trajectory of building suspense. Especially, opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. Here, he plays to his trademark type as a detestable and incompetent misogynist, and there’s never a question that Deneuve will make a meal out of him. But Truffaut, good heart that he is, has little appetite for watching a man get eaten alive. “Mermaid” is all confused chaos between destruction and desire; as if even its own director couldn’t condemn a lover to such a pitiable end; no matter how self-made it might be.