Review and interpretation of Les Salauds

With nods to film-noir and Faulkner’s Sanctuary Claire Denis paints a dimly lit picture of ill-fated family ties and the futile banality of vengeance.

The three female characters in Claire Denis’ willfully obscure – visually as well morally, but also plot-wise - spin on the often exploitative genre of the revenge film, look eerily alike. Much to the confusion of some viewers, but there’s a thematic reasoning behind this casting choice.

Before I delve further into this, I’d like to consider the generic conventions of the revenge film and how they relate to Les Salauds. Convention dictates that a male protagonist, a lone wolf, returns to what is often his home town to avenge some evil done to his family or someone that was once close to him where institutionalized authority – police, justice – has failed.

Although often not without moral ambiguity usually there’s a sense of exploitative glorification of violence inherent to the genre’s an eye for an eye ethics. In Les Salauds however the violence is dimly lit, often clumsy – not unlike a real fight. There are no one punch knock-outs, or drawn out choreography, just awkward, quickly dissolving scuffles that leave the chain-smoking protagonist wounded and gasping for air.

As is illustrated by her depiction of violence Denis’ film can admittedly be described within the vague generic outlines of the revenge film, but she skillfully uses its tropes to tell a story that is much more morally complex, that raises more questions than it answers - for the male protagonist as well as the audience - but even more so she uses this intrinsically male narrative and retells it by foregrounding the feminine characters.

Marco has fled from the world of femininity leaving behind his wife, sister, daughters, niece and a family business of women’s (!) shoes. After returning to his past he’s never able to clearly see what he’s gotten himself into - the truth is as obscure as the film’s visual style – and his actions are motivated by the connection he has to the three main female characters.

What binds these women – as a group, but in a sense also as individuals – is their passivity. Yet their submissiveness is not unambiguous, as they make a more or less deliberate choice to subjugate themselves to a dominant male. Their relationship to these males are, albeit somewhat masochistically, to a degree symbiotic.

Although the motives of every character in this film are murky and veiled, the viewer can infer what the women have to gain from their position of passiveness: a glamorous lifestyle and a child that’s well taken care of (Raphalle), the possibility to attribute your downfall and moral failure as a mother to the (absent) male other (Sandra), or the hazy seduction of amorous and druggy transgressions (Justine).

If these women act, running away or even if they fire a gun – which could be considered the ultimate act – they do so to ultimately solidify their position of dependence on some male salaud, bastard.

Ghosts and lovers, they will haunt you for a while