Feature film
Les Abysses
Nikos Papatakis · 1963
Synopsis
Michèle and Marie-Louise, two sisters, have for years been serving a ruined couple of winegrowers in the Bordeaux region, who no longer pay them. The employers have decided to sell the estate and dismiss their maids, who have nowhere to go. In the dilapidated house, amid the mistress's bullying, the father's efforts to calm things down and the presence of their daughter, the tension rises by the hour.
Context
The film is inspired by the Papin sisters affair, two maids who killed their employer's wife and daughter in 1933, a news story that had already fed Genet's Les Bonnes. Jean Vauthier wrote the screenplay, and the two servants are played by two sisters, Francine and Colette Bergé. Rejected by the Cannes selection committee, the film was defended by Sartre, Beauvoir, Breton and Genet, then forced into competition by the minister André Malraux; its opponents saw in it a tacit support for the struggle for Algerian independence.
Who it is for
A film in French, with an exaggerated violence and performance style that border on farce and the theatre of the absurd.
Prizes and reception
Presented in competition at Cannes in 1963, it was shown again in the 2020s, notably at the MoMA in New York and at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival.
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