Sex as war. Breasts as breastplates. 1984’s L’Année des Méduses translates literally as Year of the Medusas but is usually rendered more tamely and less aptly in English as Year of the Jellyfish.
Director Christopher Frank (who also wrote the book) sets out his stall straight away. A shot of two cocktails in tall glasses is quickly superceded by the bare breasts of the young woman who ordered them.
We’re in the South of France, where a mother and daughter are holidaying on one of those beaches that give the more puritanical mind the heebie-jeebies. All the women are topless and everyone is carrying on as if it means nothing at all. But it does.
By day the two women lie in the sun, take a quick swim, have some lunch and loll around some more. In the evening comes the payoff as the quick glances cast all day on the beach are translated into action and sun-warmed bodies do what sun-warmed bodies want to do.
Caroline Cellier plays 38-year-old Claude, a woman worrying she “won’t know when to give up”. Trading on her sexiness, she means. Valérie Kaprisky plays her daughter Chris, a teenager striking sparks like an out-of-control forest fire.
Initially setting off like a variation on one of those TV shows with titles like Hotter Than My Daughter, a sexed-up thriller eventually plays out. Along the way Claude realises it’s her last summer of being the hotmost, while Chris tries out the new equipment and wreaks havoc with precisely the same men mother has her eye on.
These include Romain (Bernard Girardeau), a handsome, louche pimp who procures girls for rich old guys like Guttaz (Jean-Paul Dubarry), a white-bearded something in pharmaceuticals who comes to the South of France every year to sample whatever Romain has procured.
Or even Guttaz’s son, Vic (Jacques Perrin), himself grey-haired and not averse to a little cutie action.
In an extended flashback we learn that Vic and Chris had a bit of thing a couple of years earlier, when she was presumably in jailbait/Lolita territory. We also learn something about Chris – inexperienced she may have been back then but she was absolutely not to be trifled with. “Salome” is what Romain only half-jokingly calls her, and he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to women.
Made when the flotsam of the permissive age was washing up on the shores of the Aids era, Frank’s film is about the end of the era of Erica Jong’s “zipless fuck”. To Frank’s disapproving eye, actions have consequences even if both parties have signed no-strings pledges. Sex is dangerous. Sex is competitive. Ultimately sex can get you killed.
You might remember Kaprisky starring opposite Richard Gere in Breathless – the remake of À Bout de Souffle – the previous year. Hers is the least compelling performance here, though it’s strong enough to convince us that Chris is a) hot (no acting required) and b) dangerous (Kaprisky pulls that one off with a frightening impassivity).
In a tougher role as the mother sensing impending matronliness, Cellier is excellent as the woman unwilling to cede ground to her daughter. Girardeau is the best thing in it, giving off mercenary pimp vibes while simultaneously selling his character as a bit of a loveable rogue.
It’s a fascinating fail of a movie. There’s something much darker and more angular trying to get out, a film more in keeping with Nina Hagen’s defiantly guttural whoops and snarls on the incongruous German-language soundtrack than Frank’s gallic soft-edged, glowing visuals. To put it simply: Frank simply overdoes the breasts. The askew thriller it might have been – the sort of thing Brian De Palma might have made in his Body Double pomp – fights for air but can’t get enough and drowns in an excess of mammaries.
L’Année des Méduses aka Year of the Jellyfish – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
