The Trout (1982)

 

Director: Joseph Losey

Screenplay: Monique Lange and Joseph Losey

Based on the novel by Roger Vailland

Cast: Isabelle Huppert as Frédérique; Jean-Pierre Cassel as Rambert; Jeanne Moreau as Lou Rambert; Daniel Olbrychski as Saint-Genis; Jacques Spiesser as Galuchat; Isao Yamagata as Daigo Hamada; Jean-Paul Roussillon as Verjon; Roland Bertin as The Count

Canon Fodder

 

You're either sexual or you aren't.

The Trout is a minor film from Joseph Losey, a director who has become a fascination for me. He has a legacy of very well regarded films, especially a series in the later part of his career in Britain that were written by playwright Harold Pinter, such as Accident (1967), but his filmography is all the way through full of oddities, real life influences and curiosities. He began as an American director making classical Hollywood films like The Boy with Green Hair (1948), or even (for the first of his oddities) a 1951 American remake of Fritz Lang's M. He was blacklisted in the middle of the communist scare in fifties Hollywood, part of a series of campaigns in the late forties and fifties which would lead to filmmakers and screenwriters among others being exiled from being able to make films in the USA.

That did not stop Losey however, and what is fascinating is that he managed to find his feet in Europe and the United Kingdom. In the midst of this is where some curiosities do appear. The Pinter series of films are highly regarded, but there is also a Hammer produced sci-fi horror The Damned (1963); the comic book adaptation Modesty Blaise (1966); the infamous Tennessee Williams adaptation Boom! (1968) with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor; another Taylor involved production with Mia Farrow called Secret Ceremony (1968); and a career that until the end of his career involves working with Jane Fonda on an Henrik Ibsen adaptation (A Doll's House (1973)), an adaptation of Don Giovanni, an abstract suspense film (Figures in a Landscape (1970)), and even in his final film working with Vanessa Redgrave and Diana Dors (Steaming (1985)). The Trout, the second to last film, belongs to his history of working in France as well, though unlike some of his acclaimed work from those productions, this is a very odd film if a very enticing one.

A young Isabelle Huppert, in this psychosexual drama of desire set in the trout industry, is introduced in her first scene as Frédérique handling a trout, massaging a form of oil out of the fish to use, and that as the beginning of a film in tone and existence introduces a work which asks many questions, both with virtue and problems. It feels its girth, a slow paced film in the early eighties of French cinema, all brown wooden panelling and natural colour palettes, one with enough pedigree behind it to succeed. One of the screenwriters, Monique Lange, penned Henri-Georges Clouzot's last film Women in Chains (1968), another anomaly in a veteran filmmaker's career but one which looked to great innovation alongside a salient, transgressive plot with nuisance, so the same spark of talent is here too.

The Trout bursts with sexual and psychological desire and angst which is compelling, able to do so with only one piece of nudity, from Huppert herself in a scene teasing a trout farm employee when her character is younger, baring her breasts, only to trick him into handing over money expecting contact that is more physical. Contrasting this though is how unglamorous France looks as a culture in this period on film, which is a unique aspect it could use to its advantage. Sexual power games transpire in a bowling alley of all places, where trout farm businessman Rambert (Jean-Pierre Cassel), in front of his wife Lou (Jeanne Moreau) and Frédérique's husband Galuchat (Jacques Spiesser), attempts to kindle something more by way of a bowling competition with a money prize between each other. Add into this a younger colleague of his, also vying for Frédérique, and this is a psychosexual drama not of the glamour of Losey's earlier film Eva (1962), where Jeanne Moreau herself was the target of affection, but one where banality seeps in as the older man pines for Frédérique, whilst the younger manages to convince her to go to Japan on a business trip. In the midst of this her husband, who is actually gay, is nonetheless a frailer man who takes her trip to Japan with an emotional collapse.  

I had originally considered Losey himself overcooked the film in tone, which was why it is a minor film. But honestly, the truth is that The Trout is actually a compelling film to have watched, but too peculiar to have ever become a huge work in his filmography or of the era, simply for the fact this is a premise about psychosexual drama in the trout industry, which always lingers in the mind rather than becomes the launching pad for a film which develops as iconic status as Losey's own The Servant (1963), the most famous of those Pinter collaborations in the same mood. Helping considerably is that Huppert herself, this early in her career, is great in a role of Frédérique that is a complicated character to react to. With a structural aspect used that is a continuation of Accident, where flashbacks based on emotional recollection took place, we see that as a younger woman just into adulthood, in a group of young girls who prided themselves as free spirits teasing perverted older men, she could be seen as a feminist figure, whilst the film proves her even more complicated then this.

One who wraps men around her fingers at this stage slightly older and then, other times very vulnerable, even to the point when, with the possibility of having sex with a character, frigid with a wariness of the scenario or actually not comfortable at all. Sometimes she could even be argued as asexual and unfortunately still with an aura that drives men to act like idiots around her for their libidos. There is even moments where she is utterly unlikable as a character, though it is with note that the one moment which crossed a line is one the character of Frédérique recollects as a regret with shame, where to torment an older colleague of her fathers, who shared women in a bedroom of his, she goes beyond just tormenting him to throwing his prized taxidermied framed fish out a window into the river below, which is looked back to with guilt for her. Frédérique as a character is both figure who is powerful, but is not the image of the seductress as she has moments of reacting negatively in the situation. Huppert is able to make the character work, which not surprisingly shows how talented the French actress was already before a decade's long career which cemented the legacy she would create for herself.

Throughout the film does not feel bad, or for me in hindsight, never tedious, merely one culturally in a place which is curiously peculiar. Disco did not die into the 1980s as most presumed, only staying in Europe as part of the film's mind games include those that transpire in disco clubs. It shows Losey was able to step out of his comfort zone late in his career, and The Trout gets really interesting even as a cultural object when you get to the segments in Japan. In the same ballpark as Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983), it shows the vast world of Japan as a culture from an outsider's eye, viewing it as a curious environment. However Japan's culture is so rich, varied between the modern metropolises to their ancient temples, it is cannot be patronised by the film. It plays to eccentricity when even the taxi characters take have a little TV in the dashboard to watch, but the world is one so vibrant it adds a new dynamic, especially as both the world before of upper class French business was rife in tedium and lusts.

It offers potentially rewarding side characters as well, from an older woman, who has had many romances around the world, offering advice and friendship to Frédérique, to the male owner of the Japanese trout company Daigo Hamada (Isao Yamagata), who due to illness and awareness of his mortality as a result is both enjoying life and able to be an ear to Frédérique, a sane man where, rather than exoticising Japan, the questionable behaviour comes from her fellow French citizens in the midst of throws of desires.

The question that still sticks out is what The Trout actually achieves, and again, I feel the problem is that it is just too eccentric to have been able to take as a huge film. Losey has well regarded work in his career, but then there is Boom!; John Waters rightly holds it as a masterpiece, but it is a bizarre piece, and Losey, self-described as “romantic Marxist”, whilst capable at tackling really rich psychological character dramas likely has other odd creations like that or this in his career. Even with a film like Accident, a precise creation of achievement especially for the flashback structure The Trout borrows, it could have easily become overegged and of its era, something I feel this later film does. I will say, in complete honesty, I enjoyed The Trout immensely, though with knowledge that this is curious premise to even have put together. It does have pacing issues, which cannot be denied either, even for a film only ninety or so minutes. It is a production that has complex and fascinating turns this narrative takes, but is still in the midst of a drama surrounding fish and feels peculiar as a result.

It entices with a finale that has startling relationships, an abrupt murder and tragedy. [Major Spoilers] People show desire for both men and women, Rambert is attracted to both Frédérique and her husband, Jeanne Moreau gets kills in a fit of rage, and the film ends with tragedy with the older man, even a murderer now, is destroyed by what he has done and is a tragic figure held in sadness by those now having to run his business. [Spoilers End] Characters, like the younger businessman's original girlfriend, are stuck on the side adrift, and it cannot be denied that, entirely set within a middle to upper class world of sexual power plays and wealth, lavish homes in the French countryside and modern bowling alleys, that the banality even in the visual look is actually worthy for the tone, offsetting their world as actually one of bored people seducing each other. Frédérique, whilst a complicated and imperfect figure, is notably not of wealth, but from the introducing one of the working class on the trout farm, who entices for her beauty and aura; Daigo, whilst an upper class business man, is a humbled man with the ability to tap into Japanese culture which is about the transient life, so he is not going to stumble into the same mistake as his French counterparts, and the older woman who travelled the world was able to have enjoyed life and even eventually found someone who was a soul mate, rather than empty lusts.

If anything, The Trout is admirable and in needing to be seen. It is a hard sell, even just from that charmingly ridiculous title that nonetheless tells you what the film actually is about. That for me is the real issue with trying to gauge with The Trout, which it is about this odd premise, in the midst of a really glacial film, utterly remote from the films where Losey had touched the zeitgeist in terms of the Pinter films or, with the one of theirs that won huge awards The Go-Between (1971). A film like The Go-Between (1971), a British period drama, had the advantage of period dramas adapted from novels with Julie Christie in them that, whilst still an exceptional film with the same complex psychological drama within it, can least be sold as a novel adapted period drama with known actors. The Trout, whilst with known bankable actors and a novel adaptation, is something a bit more difficult to digest.