Chabrol, Haneke, Bellocchio, Skolimowski, Hong Sang-soo or Rithy Panh,Isabelle Huppertrolls his bump through world cinema, and it must be said that a role sticks to his skin, that of the great bourgeois (we wonder why...). WithThe Prisoner of Bordeaux, Huppert doesn't get rid of the mue that's snuggling, but she puts herself at the service of a small French movie alongside the awesomeHafsia Herzithat we had already loved inThe Ravisation.
Bowling to the mitt
Alma (Isabelle Huppert) feels very lonely in her huge mansion in the heart of Bordeaux, since her husband – a recognized neurologist – got locked up after killing two pedestrians driving under the influence of alcohol. One day, at the parlor, she noticed a young woman (Hafsia Herzi) which it takes under its wing. Their absent, imprisoned men brought them together, they would usually never have met. But the lock-up may come somewhere else we think...
Patricia Mazuyreturns to a quieter cinema after aBowling Saturnwho had cleared the chronicle by his unbridled violence. Surrounded byFrançois Bégaudeau(whose influence is felt in dialogues, often filled with projections of a decidedly corrosive humour) and Pierre Courrège for writing the script,The Prisoner of Bordeauxwill stage the confrontation of two usually immissible worlds. Oil and water from social backgrounds. On one side an old bourgeois woman who is unworked and (horribly) debunked, on the other side a young woman who struggles to raise her two children, while her husband is in prison.
The more traditionally scenised side of the film (notably its reversal of situation) is not the most original, and this is definitely not what will infuse toThe Prisoner of BordeauxHis charm. It's not Huppert, either, who starts (and it's notable in this film) to caricature herself by playing again and again the same roles, a bit like Depardieu with whom she started inValseusesof the (very) regrettedBertrand Blier. Apart from this, Patricia Mazuy's film has something really refreshing to offer to its spectator, and it is the title of the feature that will give the clue as to the real deep interest of the film.
The Prisoner
Indeed, if men (in plural) are locked in the film, its title suggests the presence of a prisoner. And it is obviously the character incarnated by Hafsia Herzi that the film refers to. Prisoner of her sex, prisoner of her skin colour, prisoner of her husband's troubles, prisoner of her own motherhood, but also (and above all) prisoner of this inescapable injunction to have to win her crust, in this city where she goes away to stay close to her spouse's place of imprisonment.
Winning his crust, at all costs. Work, that's the real stake of this film. The staging will also place actress Herzi in an industrial laundry, lost between the laborious bodies and the clouds of water steam. One guesses a transpiring front, front against which comes to print the red round of a laser pointer, modern bindi transposing against the wrinkles of this front the pointer of an invisible sniper, as an injunction to work, ever more. We hadWalk or die, King's novel soon transposed to the screen byFrancis Lawrence, The Prisoner of Bordeauxoffers us the taffe or die. And it's exciting!
It is all the more exciting that the relationship that unites the laborious with the great bourgeois Huppert takes over a vampiric union, the latter feeding on the other with an all-cannibal greed. Locked in his manor, plastered with a spectral whiteness, whistling his lamentations imprinted with mephistophelic manipulative accents,The Prisoner of Bordeauxis a drama larvé of a fantastic hidden, latent but palpable, recreating thanks to the figure of these two women the ever-ending class struggle that finds here a pretty (and modern) representation. Here's another film by Patricia Mazuy. To (re)discover already in physical format!
Data sheet
DVD Region B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 104 min
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Video format: 576p/25 – 2.39
Soundtrack: French Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
Subtitles : French
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