All senses are alive in Anna Biller's retelling of the French folktale Bluebeard. You can hear the soundtrack, visualize the variously form-fitting and filmy gowns, smell the cognac, feel the purring body of her white Persian cat--Oh, and thrill to la passion!
Biller is a filmmaker, and she effortlessly translates her cinematic language into beautiful prose. Hitchcock and the leading ladies of the forties and fifties lend style and glamor and the giallo genre adds a splash of color and sex. Biller loves describing the way the characters dress (their "costumes") and she's gifted at it. See below for an image from her feature film The Love Witch.
Judith is a successful Gothic Romance novelist who is swept off her feet (figuratively and literally) by a handsome stranger. After a weekend of passion they are swiftly married and honeymoon in Paris before buying a crumbling castle in the country. Her new husband, Gavin, is passionate and adoring but...not always. Judith is enraptured with him but increasingly afraid of his brooding secrecy and explosive temper. If this sounds like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, that is intentional. As Biller writes on her blog:
"Although I’m once again working in a defunct genre and style (my most recent stylistic reference is Rebecca, written in 1938), for some reason the text doesn’t read as stylistically outdated the way my films do, even though I was equally inspired by Gothic fiction written in the 1790s as in the 1930s. I think this is because we all still enjoy language and stories from many different time periods, whereas most people who watch movies are over-saturated with the style of the current time."
And while Bluebeard's Castle is nearly breathless with romance and desire, it also punctures that with sly, dark humor, as in this line of the first chapter:
"She remembered the day they met, and the way he had looked at her, and how it had filled her with a mad ecstasy, which in retrospect had been a nervous breakdown."
Or this similarly structured sentence from much later:
"But aside from the demon in her head, and her frequent nightmares, and her excessive drinking, and her insomnia, she was happy and productive."
There is this tension throughout: How much will Biller adhere Judith's story with the ones she loves to read, watch, and tell? Is the sexy/scary Gavin a flawed but ultimately romantic hero? Or is he actually just abusive and dangerous? And how much ambiguity can Judith take? She vacillates often throughout the novel, driving everyone around her batty, but it's this uncertainty, the tension between desire and fear, that make this a fascinating page turner and ultimately, a timely and harrowing examination of what it means to be a woman in love with a dangerous man.
And it's worth mentioning: It's an absolutely gorgeous book! The cover is a great homage to the Gothic pulp novels and the front and back flaps include stunning photographs.
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| Samantha Robinson as the titular Love Witch (2016), which Biller wrote, produced, and directed, as well as designed the production and costumes. |
- Michael G.
