FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Claude Sautet - Mado

On the death of Michel Piccoli

Who could ever forget the gloomy face of Michel Piccoli? With the black eyebrows and the wild grey curls? The French star of the 60s and 70s can convey a kind of dangerous eroticism like hardly anyone else. Piccoli is the type "adulterer". In the late 50's he took older men's wives, later he took younger ones. In Mado he sleeps with the prostitute of the same name. She - Mado (Ottavia Piccolo) - is young and very pretty. She argues that it is more honourable to sleep with men for money than to incur debts. One of these men is Piccolis Simon Léotard. But Mado does not love Simon. She loves the younger Pierre (Jacques Dutronc). So, unusually, Piccoli is not playing an adulterer, but a man whose love is not returned. At the same time a story from the financial industry of the 70s is constructed. It deals with the complex financial transactions of Simon, whose friend got into debt with a dubious investor and committed suicide. With the help of Mado, Simon wants to take revenge. Because whores usually have the necessary information to ruin a man. Simon wants to blackmail and finish off his enemy using the tricks of bookkeeping. A white-collar crime? No, a film by Claude Sautet. It's about sex, love and money: even if Simon were to win the whole world, he would never get Mado's love. All his money won't help him. That's why the fine society of businessmen sinks into mud in the finale. Meaning in mud. Somewhat off the beaten track is the episode with Romy Schneider as alcoholic and ex-lover of Simon. Because of Romy Schneider, most of you rent Mado - but watch out! Schneider plays a minor supporting role in a kind of movie within a movie. Sure, we experience Schneider as she must have been in 1976. Shielded from the world outside in her darkened room. But in itself this doesn't fit to the rest of the movie and somehow seems stuck.