"Pleasure Party" is a character study where nearly all the characters lack depth, except one, and even he is not really worthy of a whole movie dedicated to him. Chabrol attempts to do the anatomy of a slowly disintegrating marriage, but he chooses to tell the story from the male perspective only; the woman seems to be the inferior half in both Chabrol's and his male lead's eyes. It certainly doesn't help that both leads are not played by professional actors: Paul Gegauff was primarily a writer (who sometimes collaborated with Chabrol), while his real-life ex-wife Daniele had never acted before, and although she's not bad, her inexperience is occasionally evident (example: the crying scene). The film has its visual and aural pleasures (lost of classical music on the soundtrack), but the story is unpleasant and largely pointless (since the male lead's behavior becomes so sociopathic that it would be unwise to draw any general conclusions from this tale). You get the feeling that Chabrol made this one basically to help the Gegauff couple exorcise some of their personal demons. ** out of 4.
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gridoon202413 March 2010
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christopher-underwood28 November 2007Phew! Well, this is certainly no bundle of fun. What an ugly film, was my first thought as I stared at the closing credits. As a seasoned film fan, one is always put on guard when a male lead tells his partner that she should experiment with sleeping with other people. He would not be jealous - oh yea! But here things go from bad to really awful and as someone else has noted it is almost inconceivable that one would be likely to choose to revisit this little number. Having said all that, to discover than long time Chabrol script writer, Paul Gegauff, not only wrote this nasty piece but plays the male lead in question. Not only that but his real life wife plays the appallingly treated partner AND that their actual daughter, plays their screen daughter, just about the only light relief this movie has. Hard to recommend to non Chabrol fans but certainly a powerful piece of cinema.
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Although from his great mid-period of domestic murder mysteries, UNE PARTIE DE PLAISIR is closer to Chabrol's later L'ENFER in its study of repressive, destructive male egotism. This virtually plotless film is almost impossible to watch, as we follow an unappealing, 'cultivated', bully humiliate and grind down his lover. His dictating of her life and sexual activity is a sublimation of his flagging power as he reaches middle-aged impotence. Engimatic treatment of class and professional status too.
Very much like Varda's LE BONHEUR, as a real-life couple in charming pastoral settings set to civilised classical music play out nasty fable. Whether the story turns into a Bressonian study of redemption is unclear. -
pbczf7 April 2024This study of a violent, narcissistic, bully and his relationships would be creepy enough on its own, but the nagging feeling that the main characters are all actually playing thinly veiled versions of themselves makes the skin crawl that much more. We can start with the title: 'partie de plaisir' is something enjoyable and easily accomplished--a piece of cake--which ranks this with Haneke's 'Funny Games' and 'Happy End' on the ironic title scale. Paul Gégauff, also credited with the screenplay, one of many he wrote for a who's who of the nouvelle vague, plays Philippe, the protagonist. Danièle Gégauff, his ex-wife by the time of the film, plays Esther, the enigmatic woman on the receiving end of his humiliation and violence. Their daughter plays Élise, their daughter. Much like the films of Maurice Pialat (A nos amours), we're not always sure who's acting and who's just acting out. And perhaps most amazingly, as we watch in horror, most of Paul's circle of friends just laugh it all off and ask for another glass of the '61 Margaux. Like the proverbial car wreck, you can't look and you can't look away.
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Red-Barracuda29 April 2015The Pleasure Party was made during Claude Chabrol's strongest period, where he made most of his best films. Unfortunately, however, this is a lesser effort from the great man even if it does share some similarities with his best work. It's a marriage drama about a couple who have a conversation one night where the husband admits past infidelities and goes on to actively encourage his faithful wife to pursue other sexual relationships, allowing for them to have an open marriage. This they do but it backfires on him as he gets increasingly jealous of his wife's affairs.
The subject of infidelity is one that Chabrol covered many times in his films and here is no different. Similar to other works, the way the characters deal with news of extramarital affairs here is with not much more than a Gallic shrug, which always seems somewhat unrealistic. But then I suspect Chabrol was never purely going for realism and these infidelities were really a springboard to examine other psychological things. I think the single most differentiating factor comparing The Pleasure Party to other similarly themed Chabrol films is that the storyline and central character are very unpleasant indeed. Paul Gégauff, who also wrote this thing based on his own experiences, plays a version of himself and his unfortunate wife is also played by his real wife of the time, Danièle Gégauff. I really hope that this was not really a true representation of himself as the husband character in this one was a real low-life. Interestingly, several years later Gégauff was actually murdered by a later wife, so it does make you wonder I have to say
Offsetting the highly unsympathetic central character and unpleasant storyline is a typical Chabrol pastel colour scheme and a classical music soundtrack; both of which contrast quite noticeably with the content of the story. By the end of the film I have to admit wondering just what the message was and who we were being asked to sympathise with. An odd film but not one you would rush back to very quickly. -
The_Void31 March 2008Pleasure Party is yet another offering from the great Claude Chabrol that puts it's central focus on the director's all time favourite subject; that being infidelity. The director has explored this topic previously in films such as The Unfaithful Wife and Wedding in Blood (among others), but Pleasure Party stands out because it's an overall much darker tale than what went before, and may well be a contender for Chabrol's all time darkest film. The film really is not much fun at all to watch, but I would liken it to a car crash - the similarity being the fact that it's difficult to take your eyes off what you're seeing, despite perhaps wanting to. The plot focuses on married couple Philippe and Esther who live with their young daughter Elise. After an awkward conversation one day in which Philippe admits infidelity, it is decided (mostly from his side) that they should see other people as well as each other. It's not long before this plan backfires in spectacular fashion as Ester meets Habib and Phillipe becomes very jealous of their relationship...
Despite the ugly plot, in typical Chabrol fashion; the film is very nice to look at, which offsets the tone of the film nicely. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and as ever, the director pulls good performances out of all his lead performers. Paul Gégauff may not quite have the screen presence of Jean Yanne or Michel Bouquet, but the character fits him like a glove and I really cant see anyone else in the role. His wife, Danièle Gegauff, plays second fiddle somewhat to her co-star, but also puts in a very good and believable performance. The film really all centres on the leading man, which isn't surprising since the actor is also the scriptwriter. Everything about the story flows from his character and the film is actually more about his ego and need to control his wife than it is about infidelity. The film does not feature shocks and thrills - rather it is a continual and intense grinding down of the audience as we witness the lead character self destruct, become a shadow of himself, and take down everyone around him. Pleasure Party is not one of Chabrol's best films; but it's an undoubtedly interesting movie from one of France's premier film directors. -
MOscarbradley30 January 2017In the cinema of Claude Chabrol the bourgeoisie are distinctly lacking in charm, discreet or otherwise and none more so than Phillipe and Esther, the well-to-do couple at the centre of UNE PARTIE DE PLAISIR, who, at Phillipe's insistence, decide to have an open marriage but when Esther looks like she's falling for the first guy she sleeps with, Phillipe gets very jealous indeed.
The territory is, of course, typically Chabrolian but what makes this movie interesting as well as creepy and finally very unpleasant is that it would appear to explore the disintegrating marriage of its stars Paul Gegauff and Daniele Gegauff. Paul wrote the film in what appears to be a kind of exorcism though neither 'actor' rises above the one-dimensional. Nevertheless, Chabrol definitely embraces them treating them with more respect than either of them deserves. It may fit perfectly into Chabrol's world view of things but it's still a pretty hateful movie. -
jcappy21 April 2008This may or may not be Chabrol's best, but it must be his bravest. For what else can "The Pleasure Party" (1976) be but an open protest of patriarchy and battery. Think Ibsen's "A Doll House," and you cannot be far off. I think it's the final scenes that erase any minute doubt about the film's intent. First there is the belated rescue attempt of four men and a woman: the adult men's physical prowess seems suspended as if, as men, their hands are tied, while the woman casts a blinding black veil over Philip's head, halting the action, and condemning the actor. And then the prison scene in which Elsie (his new llama or lamb) tells her father that she is unable to learn under the harassment of a male student, to which his non-response includes the same transcendent jargon he used in the cemetery prior to his vicious assault. Chabrol and the Leguaffs have indeed taken their stand with this shattering portrait of male terror--one that explodes out of a convincingly two-faced man, and is thus all the more effective.
Yes this is a movie about male power. It is not about sexual impotence, philosophies, or a mid-life crisis , but about Philip's hard-wired connection to masculine identity. If he feels inadequate and helpless in the face of what he can only understand as female weakness, it is because he has bought into women's difference--from men. In other words, Esther is so other to him that anything other than ownership is threatening. The turning point of the film is when he advises Esther --"you should do it."--to sleep with other men. This moment must be as pointedly misogynist as his later acts of violence; for here he equates his lover with sex, temptation, and whoredom --ostensibly to test his purity and his ideas of freedom, but, in effect, he is using her to provoke her own demise. It's very instructive that although he manages the first test--even offering his satiated wife breakfast in bed the next morning, it is sex in bed--with him (to reclaim ownership) must come first. And during a party scene, he argues for the comparison of Gandhi and Hitler--unaware that Gandhi similarly used women to test his own purity, and that the latter's sadistic, eruptive violence would soon adhere to him.
What Philip becomes is a full fledged Magus: "the man who tells you everything and what to do" as he explains to Elsie, in his characterizing Habib. Toward Esther, he grows increasingly resentful, suspicious, tense, judgmental, menacing--and possessive. He shows the brawn to break down doors, and a mentality which can accept and enact cruelty. He becomes more withdrawn and, as Esther points out, racist. In the bathroom mirror scene his face, viewed through her tears, is as perverse as the Landru he introduced to his daughter in his House of Wax. The "freedom" he has granted his wife has boomeranged on him. He hates it and everyone and everything connected to it. "Liberty makes me sh_t," he says. When Sylvia simply asks "Why do you yell at Esther?" he answers that she talks too much of freedom and hangs out with guitar players. And his "profound" need for his ex-wife doesn't occur till Sylvia displays her independence in the fishing scene--here he longs for Esther's dependency symbolized for him in her fear of crabs.
Esther grasps the picture, but does not have the social power to act sufficiently on it, so finds herself ultimately trapped. However, her defiance is quiet, lucid, and courageous. Her "you, you, it's all about you" refrain, and lines like: "You make the decisions, I only say amen" and "I was great as your reflection" are equal to Ibsen's Nora. But she is more psychologically isolated than Nora, and must suffer from far more abuse, verbal, and, of course, physical. Esther is a battered woman and must endure that syndrome--she cannot fully grasp what Philip says to his buddies: "her weak point move me," and how many times is she willing to forego the depth of her own words: "since when do you care what I say." She can never finally disbelieve her husband--even the forced foot-licking is not proof-- and so, in the end turns to him in a moment of personal crisis because "she is too scared" to visit alone the tomb of the dear deceased aunt, the woman who raised her. The irony here is as devastating as her words are convincing. And her final "NO, NO" has come too late and is heard too late.
I understand that the Phillip role was turned down by several leading French actors. If one can relive some of his lines just previous to the assault, one can understand why? But his words serve to finally and totally expose the man behind the mask. His self-assurance, disarming directness, and engaging and almost defenseless smile belong now to a slave-holder, rather than a man who in his words, was "born to be joyful." When he say to Esther that all his sufferings (since their breakup--ha, ha, ha) "must be compensation for what I've been through," the viewer can only say bring on the executioner. It's so extremely tragic that he is the executioner. -
planktonrules2 February 2012If you look at the picture on IMDb, it's the same one you see on the DVD for this film--a very sexy redhead who is naked. Did you know that this redhead is only in the film for a couple minutes and that you see her naked for only about two seconds?! Yet, this is how the unscrupulous jerks have marketed the film!! Talk about false advertising!! As for the movie itself, I found it to be a real mixed bag--and the bad slightly outweighs the good. While it started off with an interesting premise, as the film progressed it became more and more unpleasant--as well as more and more difficult to believe.
The film begins with a couple who seem to be in love. Some time passes and the husband, quite stupidly, tells his wife he's had some affairs and she's free to do so if she wishes--as it won't hurt their strong relationship. However, when she begins to sleep with other men, two things happen--he becomes possessive and jealous and her 'flings' evolve into serious relationships, not just one night stands. Eventually, the two split up and their relationship is over. Now already this is not an especially pleasant film--but it gets MUCH darker and nastier. I'd say more, but, well...I didn't really care at this point.
Perhaps the film is saying that affairs are bad or that they are bad if they are serious. Or, perhaps none of these...and it's just a film about a couple of idiots. Regardless, I just didn't care about anyone and the ending was just depressing and unnecessary. Despite director Chabrol's fame, I just wasn't impressed by this film. It seemed superficial, dull and I couldn't have cared less about them. -
antcol826 May 2006OK, it's clear that this isn't a "great movie". It has some kind of tabloid energy that connects it to films by a director like Fuller. And it's committed to a very raw kind of amateurism that, as far as I know, is unique in Chabrol's oeuvre. The main actor was Chabrol's main screenwriter (Paul Gegauff), who also performs (with Chabrol's son) the 4-hand piano music used throughout the film (well, there is a one - pianist Schubert Impromptu at a key point). The couple and kid are a real-life couple and kid. And so on. This all lends a special intensity to the film but it also creates a lack of nuance. But I find that this energy corresponds to a certain experience I have (via my parents) of a marriage marked by emotional battering better than more nuanced films do. I wish Chabrol would have figured out a way to combine this rawness with his usual suavity in later films. Instead we end up with tired style exercises like Merci Pour Le Chocolat (although he really captures Swiss-ness in that film, I have to admit). Chabrol has a little trick, which I don't love, of adding some "surreal" element to his films right near the end. In this film, it's the veil as symbol of death. My girlfriend said "5 people couldn't pull him off her?" She didn't know that there's this kind of suspension near the end of many Chabrols. Anyway, I want to point out how Woody Allen seems to have stolen the 2 crab sequences for Annie Hall (the lobster sequences). In the 1st, the wife has an annoying fear of the crab. In the second, on the same beach, the new wife is masterful with the crab, and this makes Gegauff miss the 1st wife's now - endearing fear. Check it out.
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hasosch6 April 2009I had to press the return function of the remote control when I believed to hear that Paul Gégauff, main actor and writer of the novel which is the base of Chabrols "Une partie de plaisir", says about his wife: "She sides with Korzybski who claims to refuse Aristote, but she hasn't read either one". I heard right. Although I had mentioned polycontextural logic in a couple of my comments, I would have never expected to find it actually in a film - and here we are.
If you reject Aristotelian logic, you give up the whole fundamental of our thinking. With the logical categories of position and negation, also the corresponding ethical categories good and bad are abolished. In such a world everything has to be defined newly, and most things are not anymore either good or bad, but both good and bad or neither one for which a term has still to be invented. I have no idea how Gégauff came to the idea to introduce the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, in this movie. However, one could imagine that Korzybski's most important mathematical feature, the "multi-ordinality", is seen here as the metaphysical principle of the open marriage structure of the couple which finally leads into one of the most brutal catastrophes ever seen in a movie. The concept of multi-ordinality replaces unambiguous mappings through ambiguous ones - yet, not in a chaotic, but exactly restricted sense. Possibly, in the eyes of Gégauff's character, his wife breaks out of this restricted area when she goes into a sexual relationship with Habib. Gégauff's character says clearly: "Earlier, she preferred sublime culture, and now she is wallowing in the mud of human scum". (By the way: Also the highly sophisticated language which Gégauff's character uses in order to damn every lower level of human existence into hell, shows a philosophical background which is hard to find anymore.) Thus, his wife crossed the border restricted by the Korzybski-functions and is to be condemned because of that. Up to this moment, Gégauff's character still appears as the guardian of a consistently valid metaphysics; e.g., to his future new wife he underlines many times that he feels freed and relaxed. So, the real breaking-point in the story of this movie is there, where Gégauff himself abandons his own metaphysical principles. From his unreachable position, he comes so-to-say down and turns into a vulgar stalker and beggar who is ashamed about himself. However, the story seems to trespass another border, too, namely the border between Gégauff's character and Gégauff, the writer, himself. In the movie he (almost?) kills his wife on a cemetery, in his real live (just a few years after the movie) he was stabbed to death by his second wife, on Christmas' Eve. Therefore, the final question arises: Does the reflexivity which arises when somebody plays himself still belong to Korzybski's principle or does it violate this principle, because self-reflexivity is excluded in a multi-ordinal world?'- It is.