Madame Claude (1977)
Sex, secrets and state power collide as Paris’s iciest madam discovers that even the rich and untouchable look nervous when a camera enters the bedroom.
Madame Claude runs her luxury escort empire less like a brothel than an international intelligence service. Her carefully groomed girls entertain industrialists, politicians, princes and government officials, while Claude remains cool, discreet and firmly in command. Trouble begins when David Evans, a restless photographer sleeping with one of her most desirable escorts, Anne-Marie, starts taking compromising pictures of powerful clients. He sees blackmail money in those bedroom snapshots, but his little scheme soon attracts the attention of the CIA, French police, intelligence officers and some rather dangerous men who prefer their private appetites to remain private. Running alongside this political tangle is the story of Elizabeth, a beautiful but inexperienced young woman whom Claude catches stealing a dress. Recognizing...
useful raw material, Claude pays for it, draws her into the business and has her polished into a sophisticated companion. Elizabeth’s first serious assignment comes from the wealthy and thoroughly unpleasant Alexander Zakis, who wants her to initiate his sheltered son into sex. She completes the job, but feelings begin intruding into an arrangement built on money and detachment. From there, the two storylines tighten around Claude as David pushes his luck, Elizabeth discovers that paid intimacy is not as emotionally simple as advertised, and every interested party tries to turn sex into leverage.
Just Jaeckin shoots it all as a glossy erotic thriller rather than a straight biography: mirrored bodies, expensive rooms, international intrigue, surveillance and double-dealing. The plotting can be crowded and occasionally confusing, but that murkiness suits a world where nobody says exactly whom they work for. Françoise Fabian holds it together beautifully, playing Claude as an elegant, unsentimental businesswoman who knows that powerful men are often ruled by the very desires they hide.
This is pure jet-set 1970s Europe, with the Lockheed-era smell of political scandal hanging over its bedrooms. Shot in Paris, elsewhere in France, the United States and the Bahamas, it moves between boutiques, mansions, offices, hotels and sunlit retreats with the sleek look of a slightly dirty fashion magazine. Serge Gainsbourg’s score adds a languid, funky pulse, giving the film a seductive mood even when the conspiracy becomes dense.
Fabian is mature, poised and commanding rather than presented as just another naked attraction; her allure lies in the cool authority with which she studies men and manages women. Dayle Haddon brings freshness, softness and a hint of romantic vulnerability to Elizabeth, while Vibeke Knudsen and the other escorts supply the film’s more openly sensual pleasures. Expect gorgeous women, full nudity, simulated sex, voyeuristic photography and soft-focus group encounters, but nothing hardcore. It is chic softcore with brains on its mind—more interested in beautiful bodies as currency, temptation and evidence than in relentless bedroom action.
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