I've slowly been collecting the films available on DVD of both Catherine Deneuve and Francois Truffaut. Both actress and director have done some stinkers in their time - fortunately Mississipi Mermaid is not one of them.
Next to "The Soft Skin", coincidentally staring Deneuve's sister (the late Francoise Dorleac), this would have to be my favourite Truffaut film.
As well as directing, Truffaut also wrote the screenplay. Something that always strikes me about Truffaut is his almost childlike innocence when presenting a story -- one could almost call it naivety.
There's a scene towards the end of the film where Belmondo returns to the apartment in Lyon with the remains of the loot. He rings the doorbell and Deneuve answers wearing a negligee. In the time it takes Belmondo to reach their room from the street, Deneuve changes into her dress, puts on her best pair of stockings and shoes, then lies on the bed and pretends she is asleep. It's a scene that could almost come from the mind of a child - but that's Truffaut for you.
Watching Catherine Deneuve in her films of the late 60's is indeed a sensory pleasure. She is so extraordinarily beautiful it is almost painful for us to watch. Incidentally, for those fans, there are a couple of topless scenes of her in this film - indeed a sinful pleasure.
I disagree with previous posters. I see nothing 'Hitchcockian' about the film at all. As for the 'look' of it - i love the look of the older film stock used in the 60's. It certainly gives films of this period a unique look.
Highly recommended for both Deneuve and Truffaut fans......
Mississippi Mermaid
1969 [FRENCH]
Crime / Drama / Romance
Plot summary
A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woman he does not know. The woman that arrives does not look like the picture he received, but he marries her anyway.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
December 27, 2023 at 06:16 AM
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Movie Reviews
Cant get enough of Deneuve....
Catch Me If You Can...
The newspaper 'Lonely Hearts' open a door, to correspondence with a girl you soon adore, the feelings mutual, or so it seems, satisfying both your dreams, a marriage is arranged, and she's called for. The girl you meet, is not the one in her photo, but she justifies with reasons and you go, she is beautiful all round, you feel so lucky, with what you've found, it's not too long before you fall, from your plateau.
Louis Mahé loses more than he bargained for when striking up a distance correspondence with Julie Roussel, and then takes a rollercoaster of a ride as his relationship with her is lost then found, untied then bound, twisted and turned before thriving, and then taking several more turns. I'm not sure Jean-Paul Belmondo does anything over and above his usual, but Catherine Deneuve would snare any potential suitor, and I'm pretty sure they'd never be able to break free. A few threads left dangling, some curious editing and leaps of faith, but all in all an enjoyable film in the presence of two star performers from one of the great directors of the time.
The bones are here for a nice, nasty tale of self-destructive obsession, but then there's all that stuff about finding true love
"Julie, you are adorable," says Louis Mahe (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to his beautiful new mail- order bride, Julie Rousel (Catherine Deneuve). "Do you know what that means? 'Adorable'. It means worthy of adoration." Louis is a wealthy tobacco grower and cigarette manufacturer on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. When Julie arrived on the island, she didn't look like the photograph she had sent him when she agreed to be his wife. She says she was timid and decided to send the photograph of her sister. Louis is enchanted by her beauty and understands her caution. They marry, and Louis becomes a husband deeply happy. He tells her she is worthy of adoration just a day or two after he arranges to change his personal and business accounts into joint accounts. That evening, Julie has disappeared, cleaning out both accounts. Louis goes to France, has a breakdown, and then by chance sees Julie in a newscast about a new nightclub and the women there who are hostesses. Louis learns she is really a woman named Marion Vergano. Marion's history would lead only the most obsessed of men to think a happy ending could be in the cards. Most of the movie places us in France after Louis has found her and accepted her as Marion Vergano
Mississippi Mermaid, written and directed by Francois Truffaut, is a movie of Louis' obsession, of sexual psychosis, of parasitic selfishness, of stolen identity and of rat poison, with a lot of self-revealing (some of it even true) dialog thrown in. As much as I think comparing one director to another is usually pointless, in this case Truffaut may have watched Vertigo, Psycho and Marnie once too often. Still, murder at the top of the stairs, the star power of Deneuve and Belmondo and some eccentric passing opinions (Louis thinks Johnny Guitar is "a love story, with lots of feeling in it."), all handled with Truffaut's characteristic confidence isn't something to pass by. The downside is that Mississippi Mermaid, despite all of its advantages, at times veers too close to melodramatic parody.
"You mustn't cry, my dear. It's your happiness I want, not your tears."
"I'm learning what love is, Louis. It's painful. It hurts me." It sounds better in French, but the meaning is just as soppy.
Truffaut adapted his movie from the pulp mystery novel, Waltz into Darkness, by Cornell Woolrich writing as William Irish. The movie didn't do too well the first time out, but then underwent a rediscovery of sorts. Unfortunately, that meant articles by people who teach film studies at universities. One such person wrote, Mississippi Mermaid "remains a fascinating exploration of the major themes essayed by movie melodramas of betrayal - a sort of distillation of the amoral nucleus of Double Indemnity and the wilder settings of Key Largo." Distillation of the amoral nucleus? I don't even know what an amoral nucleus is. The salient point, for me, is that films such as Double Indemnity and Key Largo are above all else tightly told stories. I think Truffaut with Mississippi Mermaid started with a nice, nasty, obsessional pulp tale, but then tried to do too much with it.