MADEMOISELLE

Long before Glenn Close took to boiling bunnies we had Jeanne Moreau as MADEMOISELLE, a provincial French school mistress whose passion for hunky Italian Ettore Manni leads her to commit all kinds of mischief, (arson, flooding farms, poisoning the water supply), you might say all in the name of tainted love. Tony Richardson's remarkable (and greatly underrated) film was written by Jean Genet who knew all about obsessive, sado-masochistic longing and it's so brilliantly plotted and acted by Moreau that I'm even inclined to overlook the atrocious dubbing of most of the supporting cast, (and the Italian speaking scenes in the version I saw were without sub-titles). The magnificent wide-screen photography is by David Watkins, ensuring that at least it looks like a masterpiece.