Word: bouviers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tavernier attempts to explore the concept of madness through Bouvier's experience as a social outcast yet the character is never clarified. Tavernier dredges up the usual socio-economic sludge but he leaves it unexplained; was Bouvier raped by monks, did the rabid dog truly bite him, was he mistreated in the hospital, was he even crazy before he shot Louise and put two bullets in his own head? These questions do not provoke thoughtful analysis into the very nature and definition of madness but rather confuse and eventually annoy the audience. If Bouvier was a lovable fool, dispensing wisdom...
Lyrical murders? When Bouvier begins to kill, The Judge and The Assassin becomes utterly incomprehensible. Tavernier's presentation of these gruesome murders has an appalling pastoral charm; the young victims lie asleep in their blood, their lamb-like eyes closed forever. Little ugliness or real violence sullies the screen; death comes amid aerial shots of southern France and the lyrical song of birds...
Tavernier is utterly unable to reconcile his vision of Bouvier as society's victim and the audience's gut response to these atrocities. His attempt to weasel out of providing firm answers by "prettying up" these murders verges on the immoral. To kill young children is a heinous crime and no amount of earlier abuse can explain it away...
However, one part of the film succeeds brilliantly, mostly through the superb performance of Phillipe Noiret as Rousseau, Bouvier's presiding judge. Despite some heavy handed parallels between the two men such as their shared penchant for sodomy and red heads, Noiret lifts his character out of the prevailing "the straights are just as crazy" mold and gives life to this balding judge who still lives at home with his exquisite, adored Maman. Noiret captures the fierce ambition of Rousseau; he yearns for that Legion of Honor medal with all the intensity of a good schoolboy who wants to please...
...Judge and The Assassin ends with a cinematic non sequitur; a strike breaks out in a never-before-mentioned-factory, Isabelle Huppert, last seen as the sodomized mistress of Rousseau, now appears as an aspiring diva, singing Bouvier's favorite ballad-off-key, and the entire striking mob is bathed in a Hallmark card glow. The police prepare to shoot and the screen goes black as these significant words appear: "in the year that Joseph Bouvier killed twelve children, 16,000 died in the mines of France." Both facts are terrible; is Tavernier suggesting that Bouvier should not have been...