La Truite (The Trout, 1982)

We rented this for two reasons: Jeanne Moreau is in it, and the DVD case said it was a “sex comedy.” Ha! “La Truite” has neither sex nor comedy, nor anything remotely interesting to say, for that matter. The main character, Frederique (Isabelle Huppert), is supposed to be “The Trout” I suppose, in that she is slippery and constantly wriggling out of men’s clutches. She supposedly vowed as a teenager to use her sexuality to get whatever she could out of men, while giving them as little as possible in return. (Sounds more like what the filmmaker did to me.) Rather than making an interesting tale of that, or even a bit of soft-porn fun, the film presents a dour, tepid take on sexual politics that is as unbearable as it is long. Really, the only thing funny about the film is that I sat through the whole thing, thinking that surely a point would appear somewhere. The joke was on me!

Jeanne Moreau is excellent, as always, but she is wasted in this farce. The rest of the cast either cannot act or were as disgusted by the script as I was and couldn’t fake it. For the love of God, leave this one on the shelf!

0 stars.