Les Créatures
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Les Créatures (Swedish: Varelserna) is a French-Swedish 1966 film written and directed by Agnès Varda that recounts a story of a couple who have just moved to a new town and been in a car accident. The wife, Mylène Piccoli, loses her voice in the accident and communicates through writing. The husband, Edgar Piccoli, is a science fiction writer working to produce his next book.
Les Créatures was an official selection of the Venice film festival, though it received mixed reviews. The film failed commercially.
Agnès Varda later recycled the leftover film stock from the film as the basis for her Ma Cabane de l’Échec (My Shack of Failure). Ma Cabane was made from film stock directly from the distribution copy and rearranged to form the structure of a cabin.
Plot synopsis
Les Créatures opens with Mylène and Edgar Piccoli driving down an empty road. Mylène expresses concern over how quickly Edgar is driving, but he refuses to slow down. Edgar defends his driving speed, stating that when he goes fast, his ideas also go fast. He describes how happy the two will be while living in a seaside house and going on long walks. Mylène agrees with Edgar, but asks him once more to slow down. Edgar does not, and shortly thereafter crashes into a tree.
We see that Edgar has survived the crash and is passing time watching the tide come in as he stands on an elevated platform located on an isolated beach. A man drives past and offers Edgar a ride, saying that he will have to wait eight hours to leave otherwise. Edgar passes the ride up and instead watches the tide from the platform.
Edgar is seen beginning to write a book in scenes that are interspersed with his travels around his new town. In these travels, he passes by a house with a stone tower on property that is marked “off limits.” There is a solitary figure standing atop the tower, though the two do not interact. Edgar visits a store run by a woman and her daughter. Once Edgar leaves, the daughter remarks that he scared her, but the mother defends him, describing him as quiet but polite. While Edgar is in the outdoor market, Max and Pierre, two linen vendors, take particular note of him
As Edgar drives home, Max and Pierre, who have blocked the road, stop him. The two proceed to fake a fight, and when Edgar intervenes, they cover him with a sheet rigged to rip. When it does, Max and Pierre insist that Edgar pays 50 francs for it. In the following scene, the vendors are seen talking to the shopkeeper and explaining that they feel something is amiss with Edgar.
Max and Pierre then harass Edgar at his home, while he is attempting to enjoy time with his pregnant wife Mylène, who has been rendered mute by the wreck. Edgar is able to drive the two off, but the next time he leaves the house, he finds a pile of sheets next to a dead cat.
He tries to find the owner of the dead cat, but it’s not the shopkeeper's. He tries the local hotel, where he is accused of killing the cat. The film turns red, he accuses the hotel cook of killing the cat, as they serve cat when they’re out of rabbit. He then beats those who accused him of killing the cat with its corpse. The manager of the hotel comes out to intervene and reassure Edgar that her cat is still alive. When Edgar goes to bury the cat, he discovers a strange metallic disc attached to it.
It is revealed that everything strange and out of the ordinary that has been transpiring recently is actually a story that Edgar is writing told through his eyes, though it is unclear exactly where the fiction of Edgar’s story begins and the reality of his life as a writer ends. Edgar explains that a man who is more of an evil spirit than any kind of man or animal can control others through a remote device, though the batteries only last one hour. In Edgar’s story, those who are being controlled are forced into actions that ruin their personal relationships. Each of the characters in Edgar’s story are the residents of the town in which he and Mylène currently reside.
In his story Edgar becomes suspicious of his neighbor in the tower marked as off limits: Mr. Ducasse. Edgar enlists the linen vendors’ help to break into Mr. Ducasse’s house and investigate. Once inside, Edgar confronts Mr. Ducasse and forces him to explain the events that have been happening. Mr. Ducasse demonstrates that he can control people remotely, and does so by forcing one of the vendors, Pierre, to nearly jump out of a nearby window. At this point, Pierre decides he has seen enough and leaves. Mr. Ducasse tells Edgar that he will give him all the answers that he wants as long as Edgar can best him in a game that resembles a twisted version of chess. Edgar agrees to this plan.
In the game, miniature versions of the residents of the town are placed on a chessboard and driven to interact with one another. A nearby monitor displays a video of all the interactions the residents are having. Edgar must keep the relationships between the characters healthy while Mr. Ducasse attempts to drive them apart by controlling their minds for one minute at a time, during which time the screen turns red. The game proceeds with some relationships surviving and others breaking apart.
Edgar has seen enough, however, when Mr. Ducasse attempts to have the old man who owns the local hotel rape the shopkeeper’s daughter, Suzon. Edgar proceeds to smash all the equipment and fight Mr. Ducasse. The fight proceeds to the top of the tower in the house, where Edgar forces Mr. Ducasse off the ledge to his death.
Thus ends the fictional story that Edgar has been writing. When Edgar next goes to town in an effort to call the local doctor to help Mylène through labor, though, he finds out that the real Mr. Ducasse had committed suicide by jumping from his tower’s balcony and dying in the same manner as in Edgar’s story.
Throughout the film, the line between what is fictional and what is really occurring to Edgar Piccoli is blurred. One is never quite sure when the film has stopped following Edgar the writer and begun following Edgar the subject of the novel. One thing that does become clear by the end of the film is that the metal discs are used to control the minds of the residents in the town, which is indicated by the film turning red. In these particular instances, the viewer knows that the scenes being watched are part of the novel, and not Piccoli’s life as a writer.
Cast
- Catherine Deneuve as Mylène
- Michel Piccoli as Edgar Piccoli
- Eva Dahlbeck as Michele Quellec
- Marie-France Mignal as Vivane Quellec
- Britta Pettersson as Lucie de Montyon
- Ursula Kubler as Vamp
- Jeanne Allard as Henriete
- Joëlle Gozzi as Suzon
- Bernard La Jarrige as Doctor Desteau
- Lucien Bodard as Monsieur Ducasse
- Pierre Danny as Max Picot
- Louis Falavigna as Pierre Roland
- Nino Castelnuovo as Jean Modet
