Memoirs of a French Whore (1979)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

there are two kinds of whore, nature whore and forced whore, the former kind prevails,there is no cut rated whores I think. forced one is not whore morallythe message of the film is kind like being a whore isn't bad,what's bad is being a tool of males...so guess I cannot agree with the director, the duvall guy might have huge experience in whores, but he couldn't give more useful info than a ten years old.not the worst film about sex, routine for my huge film collection and daily viewing.

Prostitution is a subject that has been ill-treated in film. Either the subject matter is too shocking for prudish censor boards, or the scripts have foundered in sentimentality and silliness. There is the documentary approach: Godard tried it twice in Vivre Sa vie and Two or three things..., with no great success. There are the romantic-surrealist or burlesque approaches: Belle de jour, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Pretty Baby, Whore, Irma La Douce. These films have their partisans, but they don't satisfy me. The violence and squalor of whoring just aren't brought out and made real. This is a trade that can lead to the death (or incapacitation) of the woman who practices it. Daniel Duval is not a director to stand with Bunuel, Malle, Altman or Godard, but at least he understands the grittiness and desperation of the material he is dealing with.Miou-Miou won the César for Best Actress for her portrayal of Marie-Mage; it is well deserved. She brings out the desperate clinging to her pimp Gérard (excellently played by Duval), and makes real the symbiotic relations between the two. Gérard, for all his creepiness, is really the best thing she has ever seen.

I first saw this disturbing film at one of our local art galleries that also screened all of the new independent & foreign films that our local multi screen cinemas wouldn't touch with a ten foot projector. The story deals with a young woman under the spell of love with her new boyfriend who has a slimy,scummy undercurrent (read that as a pimp). Over the period of a few short years, she is transformed into a street wise,hardened hooker. We are treated to sequences of her dealing with some of the worst street scum. If it were not for the top drawer performances of it's cast, I would easily pass this off for smarmy soft core porn, but for some reason, Miou Miou seemed to charm her way into my heart (and my sympathy). 'La Derobade' (known in the U.S.as 'Memoirs Of A French Whore')may not be everybody's cup of tea,but the strong of heart will find some relevance in it.

I hope I can say this and stay within IMDb guidelines, but this is not a very nice film, despite its pretensions to Bresson or Fassbinder. It purports to tell a harrowing story from its female protagonist's point of view - a woman prostituted by her boyfriend becomes both a slave and one of the damned in an inescapable man-made hell - but all the time violence on women is fetishised and exploited, while that on men is chastely elided. It is the duty of filmmakers to expose repression and corruption, not collude in it.