L'Argent (1983)
Also known as "Money"
Starring: Christian Patey, Vincent Risterucci, Caroline Lang, Silvie Van Den Elsen, Béatrice Tabourin, Didier Baussy, Marc Ernest Fourneau, Bruno Lapeyre, François-Marie Banier, Alain Aptekman, Jeanne Aptekmen, Dominique Mullier, Jacques Behr, Gilles Durieux, Alain Bourguignon, André Cler, Claude Cler, Anne de Karvazdoué, Michel Briguet
Director: Robert Bresson
Running Time: 81 minutes
US MPAA rating: N/AUK BBFC rating: PG
Crime, Drama
On DVD Two schoolboys (Marc Ernest Fourneau, Bruno Lapeyre) use a counterfeit banknote in a photography shop. The shop's owner (Didier Baussy) then knowingly passes on the bill to innocent engineer Yvon (Christian Patey), and when Yvon is accused of forging the note himself, the owner and an unscrupulous employee (Vincent Risterucci) deny ever having seen him before. Yvon is spared by the courts, but the damage to his reputation leads him to lose first his job, and then his innocence, his freedom, his beloved wife (Caroline Lang) and daughter (Silvie Van Den Elsen), his will to live, and ultimately his mind, as he pays society's debt and then demands, if not redemption, at least some pay-back.
Even if Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street' (1987) will always be celebrated as the film that most fully exposed the greed that dominated eighties culture, an earlier, less mainstream film from the same decade offered a far more thoroughgoing examination of money's quasi-divine power to save and to destroy. 'L'Argent' is Robert Bresson's fourteenth and final film, and arguably his sparest. Although its relatively brief duration manages to pack in courtroom drama, a car chase, a prison fight, and even towards the end some brutal murders, all these are presented in so unsensational, oblique and elliptical a manner that one often barely grasps the impact of what has happened until after the event. For Bresson is not at all concerned with superficial action, preferring instead to depict different ethical responses to an apparently arbitrary, irrational and hostile world.
'L'Argent' may be set in contemporary times, and prominently feature such new-fangled (for 1983) devices as the Automatic Telling Machine, but it turns out that this state-of-the-art gadgetry merely offers new outlets for desires as old as humanity itself. For at heart the film is a timeless parable of human corruptibility - indeed it is based on Leo Tolstoy's short story 'The Forged Note', published posthumously in 1904 - and even if Yvon's first stop after he leaves prison is at the 'Hôtel Moderne', the crimes that he commits there are driven by mankind's most ancient and atavistic instincts. Adding to the film's fable-like quality is the cast of non-professionals - or 'models', as Bresson liked to call them - normally used to bring authenticity and naturalism to his productions, but here, by contrast, seeming to wander through Bresson's moral wasteland as though in a hypnotic trance, stripped of all distinguishing personality. Here we see Everyman (and Everywoman) engaging in a not-so-free exchange of cash and justice, and as the good end up paying for others' crimes, Bresson reveals that the age-old problem of evil still has currency.
'L'Argent' is blank in style and bleak in message. Its final image - and this is really not giving anything away - is of a crowd of people continuing to stare at a doorway as though waiting for some further revelation (or indeed Revelation) to emerge. It is an ending which reflects both the human condition, and the relationship between the film and its viewers - for the harshly absurd universe that Bresson has crafted leaves us all waiting for some sort of comforting pay-off or redemptive significance that may, or may not, eventually come. Yet like money itself, the value of 'L'Argent' is no more or less than what one is willing to give it. Invest some time and thought into this film's moral and theological concerns, and you may come away the richer for it.
DVD Extras: Choice of menus (French/English); enhanced for widescreen TVs; Dolby gigital 2.0; French language with choice of subtitles (English, German, Spanish or Italian); interview with director/writer Bresson (6min), directed by Bresson himself during 1983's Cannes Film Festival, in which he declares his films to be "strivings" for truth, and explains his dislike of professional film actors and advance preparation; a second interview with Bresson (13min), in which he asserts his desire for "the new and nature", and (hilariously) expresses his admiration for the "cinematographic writing" in the latest James Bond film, 'For Your Eyes Only'; a throwaway interview with novelist Marguerite Duras (1min) in which, between long pauses, she sings Bresson's praises ("he's working in some secret medium to which he alone has the key"); original theatrical trailer.
Version reviewed: L'Argent (Artificial Eye)
It's Got: Bresson's characteristically stylised economy taken to its ultimate limits (in his ultimate film); zombie-like acting that will either mesmerise or annoy; and, perhaps surprisingly for a film about the evils that can arise from a forged bill, apparent naturalism concealing a great deal of artifice which is, like any counterfeit, best appreciated if examined carefully (and more than once).
It Needs: To be avoided by those who like action and sensationalism, or who dislike bleakness and ambiguity.
Alternatives: Pickpocket, 'Wall Street'
Summary: Bresson's film forges a mesmerisingly blank cheque which viewers must complete with their own value.
Review Date: 14th July 2005
External Links
L'Argent at the IMDB
