 |
 lack
are the soutanes, black are the nights in the student
dormitory, black are the fates of the characters and noir
is the story told in LME. Black, in French, to pay tribute
to the people who resumed the style, defined its identity
and fostered its development as a major genre.
Noir (like most noble genres) combines perfectly with
others as long as the narration exhales the fatal breath
that turns grey into black.
In its hardest version, noir combines with melodrama (“Leave
her to heaven” by John M.Stahl, “Mildred Pearce”
by Michael Curtiz), desperate romanticism (“Laura”
by Preminger, ”The Mississippi Siren” by Truffaut,
”Back the the Past” by Jacques Tourneur, etc.)
social criticism (Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler,
James Ellroy, Vazquez Montalban), or gore-less terror,
the one generated in the human heart (“Human Desires”,
in both versions, Fritz Lang, “Fallen Angel”
and “Angel face” by Preminger, etc.) and violent
melancholy (Nicholas Ray: “In a lonely place”
and “On dangerous ground”).
Noir mixes web even with western, and that is Clint Eastwood’s
greatest contribution as a director (“Unforgiven”,
is actually a thriller while “Mystic River”
is a western). A
noir film may show not a single cop, or gun. It may
not even have any physical violence attached to it,
but it definitely must have lies and fatality, casualties
usually impersonated in a woman: the femme fatal. A
femme fatal (not essential but definitely representative)
is a woman who is absolutely aware of her seductive
power. She’s hypotensive, so she’s not easily
agitated. She has lost her scruples and isn’t
willing to find them. Sex to her is not a source of
pleasure, but a source of pain for the others.
In “La mala educación”, the femme
fatal is an enfant terrible. The role played by Gael
García Bernal puts into practice samples from
Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Greer, Jean Simmons (Angel Face),
Joan Bennett (Scarlet Street), Ann Dvorak, Mary Windsor,
Lisabeth Scott, Veronica Lake and many other woman-shaped
spells. |
