This film is based upon the novel SOUS LE SOLEIL DE Satan (UNDER THE SUN OF Satan) by Georges Bernanos (1888-1948). It was filmed previously for French television in 1971, but that film does not appear to have survived. Bernanos was one of France's leading Catholic authors of the 20th century, the other two main ones being his contemporaries Jacques Maritain and Paul Claudel. Bernanos was obsessed with his faith, and especially with the role of Catholic priests in relation to their parishioners. His most famous novel is DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST, which was filmed by Robert Bresson in 1951. I had to read that novel when I was young, and dragged my way through to the very end, though it took months to recover from the trauma of so much boredom and tedium. Really, all that Catholic angst is enough to turn one's stomach. In this very bad film, Gerard Depardieu plays a young priest of overwhelmingly masochistic tendencies. We see him savagely whipping himself with a flail made of steel chain, we see him peeling off part of a hair shirt with his blood seeping from his chest. He is clearly a very, very sick man who belongs in an asylum. But in his case, that asylum is alas his church. To Bernanos all this matters, but to those of us who are not in the clutches of Rome, it could not be of less interest. The film is badly directed by Maurice Pialat, who also adapted the novel into a screenplay with his wife and in addition acted in the film. The screenplay is static and wholly uncinematic. The film largely consists of set pieces which go on far too long, where large amounts of Bernanos's anguished prose pours from the mouths of the artificially posed actors. Depardieu is doomed to collide with the appalling character played by Sandrine Bonnaire, a 16 year-old narcissistic and amoral psychopath who has killed her lover with a shotgun. Bonnaire aged 20 was a touch too old for the part, but she portrays the girl very well despite the long and languid speeches she is required to declaim in tedious talky scenes which never end. Sandrine Bonnaire is an inspired actress, and she will always be remembered for what may be her finest role, as the lead actress in Agnes Varda's brilliant film VAGABOND (1985), a harrowing and searing portrayal of loneliness and hopelessness. She is also spectacular in Jacques Rivette's masterpiece SECRET DEFENCE (1998, see my review). But all of her efforts in this film are ultimately of no avail, because the film stinks.
Review of Under the Sun of Satan
