In All Innocence
France 1998
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Paris, the present. Two young women, Cécile and her Moroccan friend Semira, gatecrash a reception at an art gallery. There, Cécile steals wallets. Ejected, Cécile and Semira hold up a jeweller with a toy gun. He sounds the alarm; Semira is caught but Cécile gets away. Fearing prosecution, Cécile finds in one of the wallets the card of Michel, a lawyer whose wife Viviane runs the art gallery. Attracted to her, Michel agrees to take her case. Vincent, Cécile's on-and-off boyfriend, offers to give her a false alibi, to which Michel reluctantly agrees. Cécile is acquitted but Semira is deported. Michel and Cécile move into a hotel, although she secretly continues to see Vincent. Jealous, Vincent starts stalking Michel and Cécile. When they move to an apartment he breaks in and trashes it.
Martorel, the state prosecutor, leans on Vincent to admit his perjury. Viviane visits Martorel and persuades him to lay off. Cécile tells Michel she's pregnant. She goes to see Vincent one last time. Michel breaks in on them and Vincent stabs him. Leaving him for dead they flee, but Cécile evades Vincent and heads for Spain, hoping to rejoin Semira in Morocco. Months later Michel, who survived the stabbing, tries to see Viviane at an exhibition of her sculptures, but he is refused entry.
Review
Georges Simenon's characters are often victims less of fate than of their own self-destructive urges. Of the four main players in In All Innocence (adapted from Simenon's 1956 novel En cas de malheur), three seemingly have it made, but can't resist the very course of action that will bring catastrophe down upon them. It may be fate which initially snags them, but after that they perversely do everything to aid its machinations, pulling at the one loose thread until the whole garment of their lives unravels.
The novel has already been filmed once before, in 1958, directed by Claude Autant-Lara (and released in Britain under the salacious title Love Is My Profession). That version starred the veteran team of Jean Gabin and Edwige Feuillère as the older lawyer and his wife. Their formidable combined presence steamrollered straight over the 24-year-old Brigitte Bardot and her young Italian co-star Franco Interlenghi as the two young ruffians. Pierre Jolivet's new version is far better cast, with the actors closer to each other in age and a lot more attuned in their acting styles. As Cécile, Virginie Ledoyen (recently seen in The Beach) is appealingly amoral, a seductive mixture of cynicism and naïveté. Arriving at lawyer Michel's office to ask him to defend her, she stands defiantly still in the middle of the room, at once pleading and scornful, while he prowls restlessly around her, bemused by his own sudden susceptibility.
What hooks him isn't just her sexual attractiveness, but that he sees in her a link back to his own roots in the underclass which he feels he's betrayed. "Through her, I realise I'm not where I belong," he tells his wife, trying to rationalise one betrayal with another. Gérard Lanvin convinces as a man who was once a street-smart kid on a sink estate, making redundant a scene when he takes Cécile on a tour of his old quartier. But having once got Cécile, he can't think of anything to do with her but install her in a gilded cage like the one he's just quitted. Inevitably, since she now isn't "where she belongs" either, she flits off to see her lowlife ex-lover.
Jolivet and his screenwriter Roselyne Bosch, skilfully updating Simenon's original, keep the storyline lean and taut and make unhackneyed use of their Parisian settings, from the smart boulevards of the Opéra to the squalid suburban tenements of Pantin. Though there's a hint of a social subtext to the film (Michel to Cécile: "My clients don't rob banks. Or not at gunpoint"), it's not rammed home. Michel may choose to see Cécile as a victim of the system, but that's hardly how she sees herself. Ultimately it's Michel who's the loser, who in the final scene can't even do what Cécile and her friend Semira did effortlessly at the start: gatecrash a posh reception. He's lost his acquired social skills without regaining those he used to have, and to add to his humiliation the reception is in honour of his wife. Two of the film's most emotionally complex scenes are superbly carried by Carole Bouquet as the wife in question. In one, she persuades the state prosecutor not to pursue judgement against her husband: she might want Michel dead, but she doesn't want to see him broken. And in a brief impulse of revenge she starts to seduce Michel's assistant, only to stop short, her expression conveying an eloquent mix of shame, compassion and a half-amused sense that the move is unworthy of her. By the end of the film, having come into her own at last, she strides away while Michel hobbles after her, pleading. Will she take him back? Shrewdly, the film leaves the question open.
Credits
- Director
- Pierre Jolivet
- Producer
- Alain Goldman
- Screenplay
- Roselyne Bosch
- Based on the novel En cas de malheur by
- Georges Simenon
- Director of Photography
- Pascal Ridao
- Editor
- Yves Deschamps
- Art Director
- Thierry Flamand
- Music
- Serge Perathoner
- Jannick Top
- ©Légende Entreprises/
- France 3 Cinéma/
- Légende Productions
- Production Companies
- Alain Goldman presents
- a Légendes Entreprises-France 2 Cinéma production
- With the participation of Canal+ and soficas Sofigram 2 and Gimages
- Production Manager
- François Hamel
- Unit Production Manager
- Pascal Ralité
- Unit Managers
- Sylvain Bouladoux
- Antoine Vierny
- Pre-production:
- Florence Sempé
- Location Manager
- Jean-Philippe Reverdot
- Assistant Directors
- Douglas Law
- Mathieu Thouvenot
- Location:
- Bruno Chauris
- Nicolas Pousse
- Séverine Cherbonnel
- Etienne Levallois
- Script Supervisor
- Sylvie Koechlin
- Casting
- Frédérique Moidon
- Steadicam Operator
- Patrick de Ranter
- Special Effects
- Benoît Squizzato
- Guy Monbillard
- Set Decorator
- Bernadette Saint-Loubert
- Viviane's Sculptures
- Anne Samuelson
- Costumes
- Valérie Pozzo di Borgo
- Make-up Supervision
- Annick Legout
- Chief Hairstylist
- Fabienne Bressan
- Title Graphics
- Thierry Flamand
- Titles
- Mikros Image
- Thierry Flamand
- Frédéric Moreau
- Philippe Pontonné
- Emmanuel Gondeau
- François Vogel
- Soundtrack
- extracts from "The Magic Flute" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Rias Symphonie Orchester of Berlin conducted by Ferenc Fricsay
- Sound
- Pierre Excoffier
- William Flageollet
- Sound Editor
- Stratos Gabrielidis
- Sound Effects
- Mario Melchiorri
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Jean-Louis Airola
- Ciné Cascade International
- Cast
- Gérard Lanvin
- Michel
- Virginie Ledoyen
- Cécile Maudet
- Carole Bouquet
- Viviane
- Guillaume Canet
- Vincent
- Aurélie Vérillon
- Semira Allahoui
- Jean-Pierre Lorit
- Antoine
- Denis Podalydès
- William Martorel
- Anne Le Ny
- Bordenave
- Nadia Barentin
- Lili
- Mar Sodupe
- Luisa
- Pascal Leguennec
- René
- Anny Romand
- Judge Menadier
- Françoise Sage
- Judge Menadier's assistant
- Michel Ouimet
- presiding judge
- Thang Long
- jeweller
- Simona Benzakein
- press attaché
- Marie-Christine Orry
- Trocadéro manager
- Sabri Lahmer
- Aziz
- Candice Sanchez
- Andrés
- Yvan Valensi
- Plaza manager
- Rachid Hafassa
- Kirouane
- Jean-Pol Brissart
- florist
- Fréderique Moidon
- saleswoman
- Eric Challier
- Philippe Cura
- security guards
- Pierre Martot
- Olivier Foubert
- policemen
- Alexa George
- trainee lawyer
- Sébastien Bernard
- florist's assistant
- Benoît Chabert
- Parc de Princes client
- François Verdoux
- idiot
- François Berléand
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Pathé Distribution
- 9,111 feet
- 101 minutes 14 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour
- Anamorphic [Panavision]
- Subtitles