Brigitte et Brigitte, Luc Moullet's Debut, Opens Northwest Film Forum's Retrospective

BRIGITTE ET BRIGITTE
(Luc Moullet, France, 1966, 35mm, 71 minutes)




"The young American filmmakers have nothing to say, Sam Fuller even less than the others. He has something to do, and he does it, naturally, without forcing it. This isn't a small compliment."--Luc Moullet

Last week, I received my order for Sam Fuller's 2002 autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking. The first thing I did was to look up Luc Moullet in the index, since the late Shock Corridor filmmaker appears in Brigitte et Brigitte. Well, Fuller doesn't reminisce about this feature, but he does recall his first encounter with Monsieur Moullet:

"During rehearsals one day [for Hell and High Water], Victor brought a French movie magazine to the set. It was called Cahiers du Cinéma (Cinema Notebooks). It had a distinctive yellow cover and was edited by a man named André Bazin. The magazine's contributors were young men named Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Luc Moullet. I'd never heard of the magazine or its writers. The publication was refreshing, with passionate, in-depth articles about techniques and themes in contemporary movies. Victor translated a few passages from Cahiers that praised me and my work. I was surprised and thrilled. That was the beginning of a long love affair. I was a fan of the magazine for many years. Cahiers was a fervent supporter of my work. Luc Moullet later wrote an article ["Sam Fuller sur les brisées de Marlowe," 1959] comparing me to Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe, for Chrissakes! I could hardly shave after that came out, having to look at myself in the mirror, the ghost of Doctor Faustus over my shoulder."

In truth, Fuller merely cameos in Brigitte et Brigitte as "Samuel Fuller," naturellement--just as he did in Godard's Pierrot le Fou the year before--but it's a charming bit, nonetheless. 

Moullet's absurdist comedy actually revolves around two young provincial women, en route to attend the Sorbonne, who meet in a Paris train station.

Though one is small, dark, and right-wing (Françoise Vatel, who also stars in A Comedy of Work and The Smugglers), the other taller, blonder, and communist (Colette Descombes), they're both wearing the same preppy outfit--wool pea coat, plaid skirt--and their hair is styled in the same chic 1960s manner. They're even toting the same patent leather handbag.

They forge an instant friendship. The Brigittes get an apartment together and do everything as a twosome--sightseeing, studying, and dating. 

It's a Gallic Ghost World as directed by a more upbeat Godard. Brigitte et Brigitte is certainly as post-modern, since it's also a film about film, like Godard's Bande à Part, aka A Band of Outsiders, from two years before. 

In other words, the Brigittes, like the ménage à trois in Bertolucci's erotic rêverie The Dreamers--which takes place in 1968--are constantly watching, reading about, and even interviewing people on the street about movies.

They find it difficult to come to any firm conclusions.

One film goer, for instance, claims Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Jerry Lewis as the best filmmakers, the next claims those three as the worst. Who to believe? All they know is that Sam Fuller is The Man. Alas, they find it easier to come to a conclusion about their friendship, and as with Ghost World's Enid and Rebecca: It isn't built to last.

Moullet is now into his fourth decade of filmmaking with 32 films and counting. He started writing for Cahiers when he was 18 and released his first film, four years later, in 1960. Fellow Cahiers critics-turned-auteurs Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and André Téchiné (above) also cameo in this minimalist gem that Godard described as "revolutionary." (Rohmer plays a professor, Chabrol a lecherous uncle, and Téchiné an interviewee.)

Samuel Fuller (1912-1997), meanwhile, who also began as a writer, would go on to appear in the films of several other directorial disciples, including Steven Spielberg (1941), Wim Wenders (The American Friend), and Finland's Mika Kaurismäki (Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made alongside writer/director Jim Jarmusch).

Next up: A Girl Is a Gun, aka An Adventure of Billy the Kid with Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Brigitte et Brigitte plays the Northwest Film Forum July 21-23, Fri and Sun at 7pm and Sat at 9pm (plus Sat and Sun at 5pm). The full series, FRENCH KING OF COMEDY: SEVEN WONDERS OF LUC MOULLET, runs from July 21-27. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. For more information, please click here.

Images from UCLA Film & Television Archive (Colette Descombes  and Francoise Vatel), Film at Lincoln Center (Descombes and Vatel), Base de Données de Films Français (Descombes and André Téchiné), and AlloCiné (poster featuring Descombes, Vatel, and Claude Melki as Léon).