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Madame Claude
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024). |
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The Film
 To most people, Claude Berger (Belle de jour's Françoise Fabian) is an attractive if rather cold woman. Only her girls and her clients know her as Madame Claude, the proprietor of an elite escort agency that supplies companionship to the wealthy and powerful. Although she is aware that the French government has tapped her phones and are surveilling her moves trying to get her on tax fraud – with Inspector Lefevre (Three Men to Kill's François Perrot) well aware that she has too many connections for them to get her on pimping – she is unaware that the CIA is investigating her on suspicion of being involved in a bribery scandal involving a deal between the Japanese and Lockheed after one of her girls Anne-Marie (The Story of O's Vibeke Knudsen-Bergeron) was photographed in the company of a Japanese bigwig. A bigger bother for Claude is shady photographer David Evans (singer Murray Head of Sunday Bloody Sunday) who has been sleeping with several of her models in order to photograph high profile clients for blackmail purposes (he is also working with French intelligence to get evidence on Madame Claude in exchange for dropping a drug charge). When Anne-Marie quits on Claude, she makes overtures to recruit office worker Lizzie (Cyborg's Dayle Haddon) who she rescued from a shoplifting charge in a dress shop. Even before David tries to warn her that Claude's empire is crumbling, Lizzie becomes disillusioned with the business after getting in over her head with wealthy Alexander Zakis (Fruit of Passion's Klaus Kinski) but they are all ultimately pawns in a deadly game of political intrigue and self-interest. Based on the real-life historical figure Fernande Grudet and more loosely on her memoirs, Madame Claude has fashion photographer-turned-filmmaker Just Jaeckin's striking soft-focus visual style – with cinematography by Robert Fraisse (Ronin) who photographed all of Jaeckin's works from Emmanuelle through his segment of Private Collections – gorgeous women, lush settings, and a diverse score by Serge Gainsbourg with a theme song sung by his lover actress Jane Birkin (Blow-Up); however, it has a plot busy with secret dealings, political maneuvers, and calling in favors in which the only real moments of erotic revelry are experienced by innocents Lizzie and Zakis' anti-capitalist son Frédéric (an early role for French leading man by Pascal Greggory of Pauline at the Beach). Head's cad photographer Evans is far from an idealist, seeming to have it in for Claude because she is not taken in by his virility and warns her girls off him, and he seals his fate when he is given the chance to get out of the country before everything blows up but decides to wrangle one last deal for blackmail material.  The film makes it clear that Claude is uninterested in the political motives and maneuvers of her clients, even if her concern for her girls being exposed by Evans' photographs is more financial than moral; as such, she comes across as more sympathetic even if the script really never lets us know her any better than any of the men who have tried to romance her including Purple Noon's Maurice Ronet (Fabian would play another madame in the more ordinary melodrama Love by Appointment/Holiday Hookers). Haddon's character is a blank slate, only standing out because of the seeming purity of her romantic feelings – she initially assumes that Claude is a lesbian who is trying to seduce her and welcomes the attention seeming out of emotional need more so than boredom – and she provides as much nudity as the less-delineated supporting characters in Claude's operation. The film is less concerned with the depiction of sex, however, than in its use by the characters so Jaeckin's interest in the sex scenes her is purely on the surface with a sex scene between Evans and Anne-Marie making heavy use of mirrored surfaces, and Zakis' orgiastic Boschian piling of naked bodies more about the composition than the action, viewed as it is through the frame of a false mirror by Zakis' invalid father. Canadian Haddon would also appear in the arty French softcore vampire film Spermula, Sergio Martino's Gambling City, and Jaeckin's The Last Romantic Lover before returning to Canada where she appeared in the cable TV favorite Bedroom Eyes. Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart (Black Moon) would replace Fabian in the lead for Madame Claude 2 helmed by François Mimet. In 2021, actress/filmmaker Sylvie Verheyde made her own filmic account of Madame Claude that is reportedly more of a biopic than Jaeckin's film. 
Video
Released theatrically in an English-dubbed version by Monarch Releasing under the title "The French Woman" and on VHS by VidAmerica, Madame Claude has been harder to see on home video in acceptable form – an unauthorized, terrible quality DVD was put out by Allegro Entertainment – until Cult Epics revisited the film with a new 4K restoration from the original camera negative supervised by Fraisse in 2021 (followed by a limited edition the following year that added a CD soundtrack). 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray transfer comes from the same restoration and looks crisper than before on video with some saturated colors spiking the more pastel tones of the seventies décor and costumes. Black levels, however, are a bit light which may be an effect of the diffusion used throughout the film – never as strong as Jaeckin's earlier films but still noticeable in the exteriors and some long shots – than fading in the negative. 
Audio
The original French track – which features a good helping of English dialogue from the American and British characters and the French actors communicating with them – and the full English dub are presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. Optional English subtitles only translate the French dialogue on the English track while a listen to the English track reveals a couple short undubbed exchanges. 
Extras
Whereas the Cult Epics disc included extras pertinent to the film, 88 Films includes a gallery and the video essay Monsieur Klaus - Kinski and French Cinema (27:21) in which film historian Troy Howarth (author of "Real Depravities: The Films of Klaus Kinski") provides an overview of Kinski's filmography focusing on French productions and co-productions from the likes of Madame Claude and That Most Important Thing: Love to more "batshit" arthouse entries lesser seen outside the country and the "full Kinski" that is Fruit of Passion. 
Packaging
The first pressing includes an original art slipcover and booklet notes by Chris O'Neill (not supplied for review).
Overall
Despite its real life story involving glamorous prostitution and ruthless power players, Just Jaeckin focuses on intrigue with a side of flesh in Madame Claude.
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