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Rating: Before #MeToo more or less hysterically claimed the importance of strong women, cinema had already been able to create memorable female figures without trapping them in the modern clichés of the aggressive, invincible, and often unbearable heroine. Julie Kohler, the avenging bride of La Mariée était en noir, is a flawless example: icy, determined, and far from the excesses of Tarantino's "Bride."
The film opens with the mysterious and thwarted suicide attempt of Julie. Seemingly appeased, the woman pretends to leave for a "convalescence" but stays in the same city and begins a plan that seems incomprehensible. With an unsettling calm, she reinvents herself to get close to her victims, starting from the charming womanizer Bliss to the pathetic loner Coral, up to the wealthy and arrogant Moran. In the first half of the film, the mystery revolves around her motivations, revealed during the third murder, when Julie recounts the tragic incident that sparked her revenge. From that moment, the film changes pace: it's no longer a question of why Julie acts, but whether she will manage to complete her revenge.
Dressed exclusively in black and white, a symbol of a world reduced to the dichotomy between life and death, Jeanne Moreau embodies Julie with icy perfection. She is a ghost with no personality left, moved only by the desire for justice or destruction - depending on how one wants to see it - and to get close to her victims, she adapts to their ideals (the sophisticated lady, the schoolteacher, the prostitute). The climax is the contrived "muse" of the painter Fergus, who for a moment almost seems capable of redeeming her with his supposed love. But the inevitability of revenge prevails, and Julie closes the circle with an unpredictable ending: she deliberately gets herself arrested to reach her last prey.
It seems that Truffaut did not love the most Hitchcockian of his films, but the screenplay, based on Cornell Woolrich's story, is impeccable: growing tension, well-calibrated twists, and a rhythm that never misses a beat. Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack, famous for his collaboration with Hitchcock, is the final touch of class in a film that makes 107 minutes fly by without a moment of boredom.
La Mariée était en noir is not only an elegant and stylized thriller; it is a lesson on how to write female characters without the need to shout. Julie Kohler seeks neither empathy nor approval in a film that demonstrates that hashtags are not needed to tell stories of female protagonists, but only a great director, an excellent screenplay, and an actress in a state of grace.
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