Love at the Top

source: Love at the Top

I have read some reviews of The Mouton Enragé and I have to correct the overall assumption this movie is a comedy, and that it is about (all sorts of) love. It is not, both not. It is a psychological thriller, about manipulation. The main character, the one to focus on, is therefore not Nicolas Mallet (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with his numerous amourous conquests that lead him to power and wealth, but his crippled friend Claude Fabre (Jean-Pierre Cassel, "father of"). The story is not about how you can indeed achieve wealth by sleeping with the right persons, it is about how easy mankind is to be manipulated. You can make people believe anything. This is rendered here by choosing a meak bleak bank employee to let him be modelled into a fierceless conqueror, just because his friend says "You can do it". The most interesting character is Claude Fabre. He is een "pied-bot" (clubfoot), and a loser. Failed as a writer (all along the story his manuscript keeps being rejected by editing houses), he earns his living by tutoring school boys. It's HIS story: how do you cope with failure? By proxy. He lets his friend do all the things he cannot, the one more incredible as the other. I see in it also a heartwrenching comment on how society works: succes is for those who look good. Because Claude Fabre is the one with brains - in fact he is a genius - and still he fails. While his friend Mallet has only his good looks to work for him, and he is the one who soares to enormous succes. I would like to comment on the end, but that would give too much away. So I rest my case.

Michel Deville quietly left us and this world a few weeks ago, and his disappearance would have gone unnoticed, for me at least, if some television stations had not marked the sad event by programming some of his films. A contemporary and colleague of the formidable New Wave generation, Deville was an interesting and quite prolific director. Somewhat more conservatory in style than his more famous colleagues, he was bolder in his choice of themes, making (and sometimes writing) films about unusual relationships between men and women, set in social environments where corruption and ambiguity are rule. He was also considered an excellent 'director of actors', so that the names of most of the famous French actresses and actors of the eras in which he created appear on the credits of his films. 'Le Mouton enragé' (the English distribution title is 'Love at the Top'), released in 1974, is one such example. I chose to see the film for its formidable cast, and I discovered an interesting movie, a story of social ascension through unusual means that could not have been brought to the screen in this way today, and which, if ever a 'remake' is made, will look completely different. Nicolas Mallet is a bank clerk dressed in gray suits and wearing bland ties. Shy and uninteresting, he allows himself to be manipulated by his friend Claude Fabre, a failed writer who lives off private French grammar lessons given in bistros. A kind of puppet manipulated into deeds and adventures far different from his psychological profile. At Claude's prompting, Nicolas enters into relationships with very different women, then with politicians, leaves his stable job to become an intermediary in politics (today we would call him a lobbyist) and in dubious dealings at an increasingly higher levels. The fun thing is that the scheme succeeds beyond all expectations. The marionette proves to be a talented lover, the women he conquers are gorgeous and the politicians he supports are elected to Parliament. For the manipulator Claude the only reward seems to be the detailed accounts that Nicolas gives about his adventures. Any pyramid business, however, risks eventually collapsing. In the story taken from Roger Blondel's novel, the separation between the roles of men and women in relationships is one that would not be accepted in today's movies. Nicolas, behind his shyness, is almost a predator seducer and the women who meet him seem to easily become his victims. But is that really how things are? The three women that Nicolas (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) meets are very different from each other. Marie-Paule (Jane Birkin at the peak of her youth and beauty) may be a prostitute, but she is sincerely in love. Roberte (Romy Schneider in one of her most sensual roles) is looking for an escape from a boring marriage and knows her interests well, even if they fall outside the social norms. Finally, Flora (Florinda Bolkan) manages her relationships in a calculated way and does not lend herself to the role of victim at all. Behind all these social intrigues played with the tools of love is Claude, played by Jean-Pierre Cassel, who today we almost automatically call 'the father of ...', but who was himself a formidable actor. Seeing him in this film we understand where the son inherited his talent but also the look of the man who knows much more than he says. 'Le Mouton enragé' is a film that must be seen without prejudice and especially not through the lens of the cinematic moralism of 2023. It is not Michel Deville's best film, and precisely because of this it is proof that he was a director whose name must neither be forgotten nor ignored.

As the title of Michel Deville's film translates as the singularly uninviting 'The Rabid Sheep', there have naturally been a few alternatives, the most inappropriate of which must surely be 'Love at the Top'. Whoever thought that one up might perhaps have had in mind the earlier 'Room at the Top' and its sequel but Laurence Harvey's social climber Joe Lampton is a positive milquetoast compared to the Nicholas Mallet of Jean-Louis Trintignant. Monsieur Trintignant utilises his innate shyness and natural charm to great effect here so as to make his character less loathsome. This film is the first of Deville's loosely connected trilogy that was to continue with the dark and disturbing 'Eaux Profondes' and culminate in his most accomplished, critically acclaimed and commercially successful 'Péril en la Demeure'. Of the three it is the most scathing and cynical and for this viewer at any rate, the weakest. Trintignant's character is a latter day Bel Ami and the women he beds show precious little resistance, notably the enchanting nymphet of Jane Birkin who becomes remarkably docile after being clipped round the chops by our hero, gorgeous Romy Schneider's bored wife who pays the ultimate price for her infidelity, cougar Florinda Bolkan who paddles with both feet and septuagenerian Mary Marquet! By far the most fascinating character and one that supplies the film's darkest element is the crippled writer Claude of Jean-Pierre Cassel, a near devilish personality who guides Nicholas on his way to sexual and financial success as well as living a life by proxy as he obviously covets his protegé's conquests. An astute critic has observed that Cassel and Trintignant could so easily have swapped roles. Deville's preferred editor Raymonde Guyot guarantees a brisk pace whilst the excellent use of the music of Saint-Saens, notably his Third Symphony, reminds us that he is credited with writing the first film score for 'L'Assassinat du Duke de Guise' in 1908. Is there a moral to the tale? 'Be careful what you wish for....' would seem the most apt.

It is just a beautiful film. Not exactly in ordinary manner who you expect - sure the cast is more than impressive, the dialogues are just fair, the satire works more than seductive, the dream , animating many from us , reminding a sort of Vicomte de Valmont and pure intelectual voyerism are admirable good points- but for situations, cliches reinvented in wise manner, for the magnificent end and for references to so many familiar situations from literature and cinema. An ordinary man, working in a bank, after two meetings with a young girl becomes the subject of a sort of social experiment of his friend. This is all, in fact, and you become part of each step of the way , with dramatic to terrible consequences of a functionary beginning a different life in profound sense. In short, just a gem.

A middle-age man (Jean-Louis Tritignant) picks up a pretty young woman (Jane Birkin). When he finds out she's a prostitute, he slaps her into submissiveness and then "rapes" her. She ends up adoring him for it, and he discovers his strange powers over beautiful women.Encouraged by his scheming friend (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a crippled, unsuccessful writer, he uses his seductive powers to seduce the wife of a business associate (Romy Schneider), and embarks on a campaign of shady land deals and political intrigue. This movie works best if you take it as a satire or absurdist comedy. The character's strange power over incredibly beautiful woman is especially ludicrous. Most men would volunteer their left testicle to sleep with Jane Birkin and their right one to sleep with Romy Schneider; they would then be left castratti if they went on to seduce the likes of Florinda Bolkan (as a bisexual political power broker)and Estelle Blain (as a vapid movie star) as Tritigant's character does here. In one of the funniest scenes, the hero has to, in order to close a deal, either sleep with a wealthy woman who is "older than God" or marry an 18-year-old heiress. Hilariously, the young girl is eager to jump into bed with him, but refuses to consider marriage, so he has to make the ultimate sacrifice. This is definitely a very black comedy which takes a lot of tragic and violent turns at the end, but in typical French (i.e. decidedly non-Hollywood)fashion it refuses to provide a tidy moral at the end or make its hero too sympathetic. As for the literal translation of the French title, "The Angry Sheep", I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Nicolas Mallet is a failure. A teller in a bank, everyone walks all over him. Then his friend, a writer who's books no one likes, has a plan to change his life. Our hero tells his boss he is quitting. He intends to spend the rest of his life making a great deal of money and sleeping with a great many women. And he manages to do just that. If it were not for the amount of death (murder/suicide/natural causes) in the film, this would be a farce. There are numerous jabs at marriage, politics, journalism and...life. Jean-Louis Trintignant is a likable amoral rogue. Romy Schneider is at her most appealing. Definitely worth a look.

This is a comedy of morals, so occasionally a gentle touch of bitterness occurs, but a lightness soften all sarcasm and irony flows till all of a sudden one moment will halt your heart and changes everything. This film, marvelously written and directed, is a gem that shines perfectly, with beautiful acting by all. Jean-Louis Trintignant is exquisite as usual, and Romy Schneider is a pearl, perfect and glowing, that is not to be missed. A truly wonderful film !!

"Inscrutability" might be in Trintignant's elements, but encumbered by the sign of the times, viz. A 1970s male wish fulfillment that mistakes sexual liberation for masculine omnipotence, his commonplace sex appeal and wooden bluntness undercuts the film's games of seduction, which makes his wooden bluntness aloofness even more grating to stomach. All those women are compartmentalized into a certain type, Birkin's Marie-Paule is an ingénue of easy virtue and a masochist streak, Bolkan's Flora is an icy, misandrist diva implied with a sapphic bent, Marquet's Madame Hermens is a miserable, lonely dowager, Blain's movie star Shirley Douglas is a hollow sex object, only Schneider's Roberte asserts herself better, a married woman who can equal Nicolas's no-strings-attached evasion with her own unfussy intelligence, but look at her denouement! Read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, please google it, thanks.

LOVE AT THE TOP--the utterly wrongheaded American title for the superb French film "Le Mouton Enrage" (which means, I think, The Rabid Sheep)-- is such an original movie, the fact that it dates back to 1974 seems all the more astounding. This film was far ahead of its time; even by today's highest standards, it accomplishes things that seem rich and new. Filmed by the hugely underrated director Michel Deville, it rather defies description in the way it combines social critique, comedy, mystery, love, sex and satire into one wholly original mix--leaving for the end a major but subtle surprise to render all that has gone before suddenly sad and more understandable. The cast is splendid, ditto the writing and theme. But it's Deville's delicious tone, keeping you constantly off-balance but enrapt, that pushes this "lost" film to a very high level indeed. (The written interview with the director on the "Special Features" section of the DVD is definitely worth reading if you have the time.)