French Frights: Serge Leroy’s La Traque
Le Chat qui Fume recently released a remaster of the French equivalent of Peckimpah’s Straw Dogs.
In 2010, Antoine Blossier released a horror movie named La Traque. I remember going to a midnight screening of it. Alone. It was some weird flicks in which a bunch of strangers are confronted by genetically enhanced boars in some dark forest. Think of either Razorback or the Korean movie Chaw but set in the French countryside. To my recollection, there was this hero guy who had to joinb forces with the family who engineered the beasts. Eventually, I’ll talk of its making through this series.
Some ten odd years later, I am scrolling through Facebook when a French distributor specializing in genre movies announces they’re gonna release an old French survival film named La Traque. This one is dated 1975. What’s more people often draw comparison between this film and Sam peckimpah’s Straw Dogs. You could stumble on some blogs who would tell you, La Traque (1975) can even be compared to Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.
For the record, Straw Dogs is one of my father’s favourite movies, meaning I saw it at a relatively young age. It was the introduction to Peckimpah’s that left me dumbfounded. A beginning which led me to my favorite western movie The Wild Bunch or Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Certainly, a French film being compared to Straw Dogs was something I needed to watch. One order later, a month in the waiting and i’ve finally seen this movie everyone’s talking about.
Serge Leroy begins his career as a film developper before working for the Swiss television and then the French television. At the time of La Traque’s making, he’s undoubtedly famous for a tv series named Pause Café. His first movie Ciel Bleu tells the tale of a reporter revolting against what he saw of war during his time in Africa. Some say it might have been quite autobiographical in nature since Leroy was a reporter for so long. A point rendered even more convincing by the news report made about the making of La Traque. In front of the camera of France television, Leroy, who is credited as the original idea behind the plot, says he made this movie because he followed hunters around for some time, and their comraderie led him to this.
While the movie opens with an up-and-coming politcian having an affaire, Serge Leroy’s La Traque is really about an english tourist visiting a house in the French countryside, only to be assaulted and raped by some two brothers she met beforehand. The men are part of a group currently hunting in a nearby forest and, in a disgusting move, the whole crew will aggregate as one block in order to silence her.
See, contrary to the rape-and-revenge accolade some critcis wants to put on the movie, the film is really closer to Eden Lake in its natue but what sets it apart from a lot of movie is that it doesn’t really try to convey the point of view of the victim. Choosing instead to recount everything through the lens of those low-men executioners, chasing after a lone woman in order not to have to be confronted for their crimes. This peculiar choice might be why some critics likes to compare it to Craven’s famous title.
Starring Mimsy Farmer as the undomitable prey, it’s no surprise some thought of it as a feminist movie. An opposition can certainly be made between this group of rural men, there are the town delinquants, some notables who stand as one against an alien beautiful woman from the city. Truth is, Farmer herself said she thought the movie was feminist in nature, and I even stumbled upon a review, in which the reviewer stated that the movie was a parable for conservatives hunting the societal progress youth tries to bring.
Hence why it’s even more interesting to see that Jean-Luc Bideau (who would become waaaay famous much latter thanks to a comedy tv show named H — Think Scrubs but waaaaay dumber) say in an intervie that Leroy never had any political views, that the filmmaker was just an avid movie maker is all. According to the actor, the ambiance on the set was tense because Leroy wasn’t an intellectual man and he let Mariel take hold of this band of man. Bideau distinctly recalls Mariel singing bawdy songs on set until Michael Lonsdale would sing along with him.
The only comrade the actor seems to have been in acquaintace with is Michel Constantion whom he said used to bring him back to Paris, for the movie got shot in Normandy. Bideau’s point of view could certainly be opposed to an interview Mimsy Farmer gave to the Swiss television at the time in which she said those men she acted with were all gentlemen.
It may be true, I’m not one to shoot on hearse as we say, here, in France. Still, the question remains. Hasn’t the Weinstein story told us anything? What about what Uma Thurman said?
With that being said, Mimsy Farmer later stated that La Traque was definitely her favourite film in all her cinematography and it would be a safe bet that the progressive/feminist overtones of the story is what could drew a new audience to it. Yet, as I always like to point out through this series: isn’t it weird that after two passages on tv and such appraisal the movie disappeared until 2021?
Next week we’ll talk about the Snyder’s Cut and Cabin Fever 2!
