The story takes place in a near distant future in which war has broken out between the sexes, with militarized bands of men and women gunning each other down in the countryside. This is the first of the film’s many overt literalizations of the psychological, mythical, and political, and it probably had a particularly sharp impact in the mid-1970s when second-wave feminism was at the peak of its political power. The protagonist is a teenage girl named Lily (Cathryn Harrison, granddaughter of actor Rex Harrison), who we first see driving through the otherwise deserted countryside in a small car before the violence of war forces her to flee deep into the forest, where she stumbles upon what appears to be a deserted country farmhouse. Evoking shades of both Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the Grimm Brothers’ Goldilocks, Lily soon discovers that she is in the midst of a bizarre family who seem to exist in their own parallel world, both in contact with, yet strangely disconnected from, the war raging all around them (one of the film’s most effective techniques is the presentation of the war via the sound of distant gunfire).

Lily first encounters the family matriarch, an old, bedridden woman played by Thérèse Giehse, who played an important role in Malle’s previous film, the incisive character study Lacombe, Lucien (1974), and to whom Black Moon is dedicated (she died shortly before its release). The old woman is a constant contradiction: sometimes gentle, sometimes vicious, she speaks both gibberish and lucid English, converses with an enormous rat, and keeps in touch with some outside person via a hulking bedside radio. At one point she appears to be dead before seemingly coming back to life, and throughout the film she acts as both Lily’s antagonist and her benefactor. The old woman’s (apparent) progeny is a pair of twentysomething, slightly androgynous siblings, both of whom are also named Lily (Alexandra Stewart and inexpressive Wahol Adonis Joe Dallesandro). They largely ignore Lily’s presence, although at one point the brother carries on a complete conversation with her by touching her. The farm is also home to a hoard of naked children who appear from time to time, usually chasing farm animals, although at one point they inexplicably attack Lily before even more inexplicably disappearing.

Black Moon’s perversity lies not so much in its overtly sexual overtones and symbolism (of which there is quite a bit), but Malle’s refusal to tie anything together in a way that is even vaguely coherent, even if the meaning is that there is no meaning (the cinematography by regular Ingmar Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist is undeniably beautiful, though, and Malle’s direction is often evocative in way he conveys great amounts of narrative information without dialogue, particularly in the first half hour). The film begins with an image of death--a badger that is crushed on the highway--and ends with an image of life: Lily preparing to suckle a unicorn, which perhaps represents her emerging into full womanhood, although such a reading effectively collapses womanhood and motherhood. Black Moon is often described as oneiric, and it certainly relies on a kind of hazy dream logic that curiously contrasts with Malle’s decidedly literal approach to the film’s visuals. His anarchic comedy Zazie dans le métro (1960) notwithstanding, Malle’s previous films, particularly Murmur of the Heart (1971) and Lacombe, Lucien, had a simple, straightforward style that complimented his humane approach to difficult subject matter (particularly the vexed political issue of French collaboration with the Nazis in Lacombe, Lucien). He uses that same approach here, but it strips the fairy tale emotion from the oddball imagery; it’s too concrete for its own good.

If Black Moon has a central point, it is to demystify the mythological, to essentially disenchant; it’s an anti-fairy tale. Thus, that most fabled and elusive of fabulous creatures, the unicorn, is here depicted as a short, dark, pot-bellied slouch who speaks in meaningless quotes and demonstrates blatant hypocrisy (he gets onto Lily for lying down on a bed of wildflowers that cry out in pain, and then proceeds to eat the very same flowers). Malle also takes one of mythology’s favorite tropes--sentient, speaking beasts--and flattens the effect, partially via the crudity of the dubbing (it sounds like bad ADR and is never matched to any kind of mouth movements) and partially via the nonsensical nature of what the animals say, whether it be the rat’s squeaking gibberish or the unicorn’s contradictory statements and actions. The film’s overall effect is rather deadening once you realize that nothing links up or provides the kind of shocking jolt or deep unease that is the hallmark of great surrealism and that whatever humor might be gleaned from the ridiculousness is effectively squashed by the lurid seriousness of Malle’s intent.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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