Xavier Giannoli, “Marguerite” (2015)
The inspiration for this film may have been the American socialite and amateur opera soprano Florence Foster Jenkins who was notorious for her bad singing but the subtext of “Marguerite” is very rich in what it says about the politics and social values of the period in which it is set, the various hypocrisies of the people who rely on the film’s central figure of Marguerite and how they manipulate her and end up destroying her, and above all the plight of women dependent on their husbands, no matter what their social status may be.
The film starts off as comedy and ends up as tragedy. It essentially pivots around rich socialite and arts patron Baroness Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot) whose husband Georges (André Marcon) had married her for her money so he could run a successful business (and keep a mistress on the side). Neglected by Georges, Marguerite retreats into a world of opera music and singing, imagining herself a great opera singer, to gain her husband’s affections, because this is all she knows and all she can do. She is encouraged in her pursuit by loyal butler Madelbos (Denis Mpunga) who takes photographs of her as various characters in her favourite operas and who may secretly be in love with her – except that his is a love that can never be requited because of the class and race divide between them. (One can appreciate the irony of someone from a socially inferior class and ethnic group controlling the fate of somebody else who is supposed to be superior in class and biology to him.) She gives recitals at her rich socialite friends’ regular music clubs and everyone who attends loathes her singing but claps politely anyway: she is after all the patron of the club.
One day two anarchists Lucien (Sylvain Dieuaide) and Kyril (Aubert Fenoy) attend a recital, at which upcoming opera singer Hazel Klein (whom Marguerite has supported financially) also sings, and Kyril writes a review that damns Marguerite with faint praise. Before long, Marguerite is mixed up with Lucien and Kyril’s bohemian set and is manipulated into performing as part of a dadaist cabaret act. Nevertheless she presses on with her singing and performing and Lucien finds her a singing teacher in the form of operatic has-been Pezzini (Michel Fau) who, along with his friends, also starts sponging off Marguerite. This sets in train a series of events that eventually leads to Marguerite’s tragic downfall, during which Georges resolves to end his affair with Marguerite’s business entrepreneur friend Françoise (whom Marguerite admires for her independence and courage in striking out on her own) and be faithful to his wife; and Madelbos finally tires of maintaining the pretence and decides to marry one of Pezzini’s friends and be his own independent man.
Set at the end of World War I and at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties, the film contrasts the world that Marguerite aspires to joining, and which is on its last legs, with the world of jazz, bohemian and avant-garde art, and freaky fringe characters such as a bearded lady whom Madelbos eventually wants to marry, frequented by Lucien and which he invites Marguerite to join. The irony here is that while Marguerite can never hope to join the exacting and perhaps exhausted world of opera – Pezzini, for all his talent, is down on his luck and his future prospects are very grim, hence he has no choice but to become Marguerite’s singing teacher just to survive – a world beckons in which one can be an off-key singer and be accepted. The world that Marguerite desires to join is a world of artifice but the world of jazz, at least in the early 1920s anyway, celebrates the joy of life and living, spontaneity, freedom and individuality: this could have been a world that accepts the aspiring diva on her terms.
On one level the film can be viewed as a love story: Marguerite sings because she wants love and connection with a distant husband who manipulated her for her money, her social status and her connections to the people he needs to impress; there’s another unrequited love story of the butler Madelbos who may or may not love Marguerite but finds through his manipulation of her fantasy an artistic outlet for himself. Marguerite’s plight, contrasted with Georges’ lover Françoise (Astrid Whettnall) who is a successful businesswoman and Hazel Klein (Christa Théret) who becomes a successful singer in both opera and more contemporary / avant-garde music, might say something about the position of women at certain levels of society who are barred from developing their talents and abilities properly and who end up retreating into fantasy.
(At this point it should be said that there is a moment in the film where indeed Marguerite is actually able to sing but it is cruelly cut off by the Cosmic Joker who then sends the singer into hospital, from which point her life starts to go downhill.)
The film being a French film, eventually this fantasy attracts the attention of rationalism in the form of medicine, which then proceeds to destroy the fantasy – and with it, Marguerite’s purpose for living and her individuality. All the people who are charmed by Marguerite’s guilelessness and innocence, her bravery and risk-taking attitude, and above all her free and generous spirit, cannot or will not help her. So on another level, it’s a film about control and the ways in which people use pretence and falsehood to prop up a deluded individual, because of what they see in her that is genuine and authentic, and how eventually another form of control – this time, state control – cuts away that pretence and destroys the individual.
The acting is superb with everyone playing his or her part well, and in particular Catherine Frot as the eponymous Marguerite gives the performance of her life, playing the doomed songstress as a wide-eyed naif who is also surprisingly intelligent and aware of the talk behind her back. Marguerite’s bravery in undertaking punishing singing lessons from Pezzini so that she can perform professionally is jaw-dropping and inspirational. Mpunga also deserves credit for playing the butler who supports and indulges his mistress in her fantasy and uses her to advance his own interests.
It seems that everyone who appears in this film or who works on it has been inspired to give of his/her very best, and I would put that down to a highly sympathetic script (written by director Giannoli) that explores themes of loyalty, truth, manipulation and the role of hypocrisy and pretence in society, and how these intersect in a narrative that turns out to be rich and devastating. We end up grieving for Marguerite not only as an individual built up and destroyed by the system, but also for the loss of the authenticity, innocence and free spiritedness that she embodies for the people who come to love her.
I can’t help but think that the British screen version of Florence Foster Jenkins’ career with Meryl Streep as the deluded singer will be very second-rate compared to this film.