Salonica World Lit: Why Won't You Just Slap Me?

Why Won't You Just Slap Me?

Two of my favorite movies of all time, Belle de Jour and Army of Shadows, just happened to be based on two novels of the same titles written by Joseph Kessel. For logic beyond my faculties, the United States has been extremely slow to come around to the talent of Joseph Kessel and it is a cultural shame in my humblest of opinions. The novel, Belle de jour, was published in France in 1928 and not until 1960 here in the United States. True,it caused much scandal when it was published in Paris in the heyday of the Roaring Twenties, but it was still published. Army of Shadows as a movie was release in France in 1969, and long regarded as the film on the French Resistance, couldn't even get screen time until 2007 - almost forty years after the film's original release and sixty-four years after the book was published.

The reason I focus on the films when speaking of Joseph Kessel is the impact that both of these films had on cinema and in particular, French cinema. But they began as great novels and show an impressive confluence his courage and innovation as a writer.

Belle de jour was serialized, at first, in a cultural journal that Kessel partly founded and funded called Gringoire. Even though the story of Severine Serizy deals with sadomasochism, it's shocking erotic content was taken on by the French publishing house Nouvelle Revue Francais, putting out the entire book in 1928.

Severine is the original desperate housewife. She is chaste yet loving, beautiful and attentive, to her husband, Pierre. Pierre is the model young Parisian doctor and Severine is the perfect wife. But their marriage is based on a deep affection void of sensuality.

Severine herself felt only a dull misery. Despite her awareness of total power over Pierre, she had failed to pry open any further a soul that belonged to her. Without wanting to, that soul had refused itself to her, as her own body had refused itself to him. The silence between them was thick with their defeat.

Fortunately, they had a passionate affection for each other that soothed everything. Their essential love was in no way hurt. On the contrary, the felt all the more a need to draw close to each other, to affirm what they knew to be indestructible. Unconsciously, Severine slipped her hand into her husband's. He gave it a firm squeeze, innocent of any sensuality, the grasp of some traveling companion, of some life companion.

Severine, obsessed with sexual fantasies and sating her carnal urges, begins to work in a high price brothel to fulfill her desires. Most of the women that she works with are doing it for the money, not for sexual expression or fulfillment. Severine becomes agile at reconciling her two selves - the safe and the adventurous. The sexual freedom that prostitution offers her the opportunity to act out her fantasies and she soon finds herself unable to live without it. After a visit from a particularly rough client, she feels only joy.

Severine lay sprawled there for a long time. And urgent duty called her, but she ignored it. She felt that from now on she had nothing to fear. She had just received a gift upon which no one else has the rigt to look. She had reached the end of her dreadful race and her finish-line had turned into a new beginning. The sense of joy she felt now was even greater than the physical joy which had shuddered through her with such unspeakable ecstasy. All the drives that had ruled her since her convalescence were justified for Severine now, whereas before they had seemed disgusting, impossible madness. She'd conquered what she had sougght so blindly; and this conquest, won through hell, filled her with an enormous, strange, stunning pride.

You can imagine that Severine's life as a prostitute during the day and wife-cum-laude at night cannot remain separated forever and that when the two do finally intermingle, it doesn't bode well for anyone. But that is due to Severine's deceit, not her desires.

Belle de jour is an honest and probing work of erotic fiction that involves societal taboos of sadomasochism, prostitution and submission. What is fascinating about this work is that it is viewed the same way now as it was eighty years ago. The ideal of women liberating themselves sexually may be a tic or two more acceptable on the grand scale of social mores, but not much more. The idea of sexual freedom for women is one controversy and Kessel portrayed Severine's conflict perfectly. Kessel felt that this was his best work. All of his works are rich with humanity and purpose, so I prefer to think of this book as his favorite. It is one of mine as well for it's forward thinking on feminism and it's unflinching image of woman struggling with guilt, shame and desire.

And do yourself a favor and watch both of these movies. They are as good as the books, a rare feat in the world of cinema.