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Simone Barbes or Virtue

Simone Barbès ou la Vertu

Marie-Claude Treilhou

1980
France
1h17
Fiction
Col.

Simone and Martine are usherettes in a porno cinema in Montparnasse. Installed in the hall, they greet regulars, put men in their place, chat and pass the time. At midnight Simone departs to a lesbian nightclub.

Skorecki, again: “In this sumptuous film, there are as many stories as there are characters, mismatched characters who carry around the pieces of their past in imaginary backpacks. So many memories evoked without artifice, without flashbacks, without confessions. We divine them frontally, in a glance, a smile, a faltering voice, an interior stammer. Simone Barbes or Virtue proves that we can reconcile “le fantastique social” (or poetic realism, if you prefer) with the formal daring of the New Wave.” Like Wakamatsu’s United Red Army, Treilhou’s first movie is constructed in three parts. Each part takes place in a single set: a porn theater, a nightclub, a car. In the last part, Michel Delahaye does with his moustache what François Léotard does with his scar in Rouge-gorge [Pierre Zucca, 1985]. Some things just disappear like that. Secret imposture or blessed humiliation? Anyway, like the Blossoms used to sing, “that’s when the tears start.”

—Serge Bozon

Cast
Ingrid Bourgoin, Martine Simonet, Michel Delahaye, Noël Simsolo
Screenplay
Marie-Claude Treilhou, Michel Delahaye
Photography
Jean-Yves Escoffier
Sound
Yves Zlotnicka
Music
Gabriel Fauré, Modeste Petrovitch Moussorgski, Roland Vincent
Art direction
Bénédict Beaugé
Editing
Paul Vecchiali
Production
Diagonale

+ discussion between Marie-Claude Treilhou and Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian

Films in the Retrospective

  • Ville de Belfort
  • Cinémas d'aujourd'hui