Obscene and voyeuristic: this dirty story only lasts 50 minutes but will surprise you!

Released in theaters on November 9, 1977, A Dirty Story is directed by iconoclastic filmmaker Jean Eustache, author of La Maman et la Putain. At the time, the work was presented on his posters as “the movie that women don’t like“, provocative catchphrase if ever there was one.

The plot presents us with a man telling a story in front of an assembly composed mainly of women. This individual discovered, in the basement of a Parisian café, a hole at the very bottom of the ladies’ toilet door.

He began to descend regularly, put his head on the floor of these filthy toilets to observe the sex of the women. The hole became an obsession: he wanted to see directly through sex, rather than going through the stages.

AN AMAZING DEVICE

This film, which was released on June 7 in a restored 4K version, is very special. Lasting 50 minutes, it is divided into two parts. The first is told by Jean-Noël Picq in the form of a document. He tells the story in front of a group of friends made up of four women and Jean Eustache himself.

The second part is a monologue in the form of fiction told by the actor Michaël Lonsdale. He was invited to do so by filmmaker and film critic Jean Douchet. The tandem is then joined by three women and a man who will become the hero’s audience.

This device set up by Jean Eustache, almost experimental, is quite disconcerting for the public. If the text is almost identical, the way of filming is totally different. For example, the document part is shot in 16mm against 35mm for the fiction. The editing also varies between the two narrative forms, making Une sale histoire a unique work of its kind.

“Eustache thus literally establishes this major form of contemporary cinema that will be the “film cut in two”! Clever and devious, he edits the “fictional” segment before the “documentary”, giving it access for the virgin spectator to the rank of original of which the “dirty” version of Picq would be the copy, according to a dialectic of the true and the false where the cinema, necessarily, would prevail over the “real life””analyzes Jean-Gavril Sluka in the columns of DVD Classic (August 2014).

AMORAL AND VOYEURISTIC

On AlloCiné, viewers gave an average rating of 3.7 out of 5 to Jean Eustache’s film. “Deeply amoral and voyeuristic, this film is rather interesting, despite the fact that the woman is desacralized in it, becoming only a sex on legs. Even if, in this case, the simple fact of “seeing”, and not “Having” is enough for the character. Michael Lonsdale’s performance is great, very authentic”says Abarai.

“It’s somewhat disconcerting, especially if you don’t know the director’s style but especially in relation to the story told by the narrator. It’s indeed quite raw and that’s why you have to adhere to the story but it must be said that Michael Lonsdale tells so well that we simply drink his words!says Shawn777.

Diamond Films

For his part, the Internet user Benoitparis describes A dirty story as “a very intelligent, very fine and delicately amoral artistic exercise. If one thinks that voyeurism is at the heart of cinema, then one will admit that Une dirty histoire is an essential work. Art is never as strong as when it makes luminous what is a priori scabrous or sordid.”

With A Dirty Story, the director drew the wrath of newspapers of the time such as Le Figaro, writes Jean-Gavril Sluka. According to the author, the filmmaker also aroused “the embarrassment of most of its usual defenders (Télérama & co).

A dirty story, however, allows him to reconnect with the writing of the Notebooks, which then leaves comatose and prompt to the mea culpa of his Mao period. For several months, its exploitation will not be empty, the work taking advantage of a controversial aura that Eustache called for”says the author.

A dirty story is part of a program of re-releases of Jean Eustache’s films in restored 4K version. These feature films have been available in theaters since June 7.