in search of the underground
by Douglas Messerli
Louis
Malle and Jean-Paul Rappeneau (based on the novel Raymond Queneau)
(screenplay), Louis Malle (director) Zazie
dans de métro (Zazie in the Metro)
/ 1960

Accordingly, Malle, using Queneau’s story, sets up a situation in which
youth, represented by Zazie, knowing who they are, seek out a world of the
underground—a world down and away from the “ordinarily” city life—while the
adults, pure pretenders, have no idea who they are or even where they are. The film begins, in fact, with Gabriel noting, in
the slang, neologisms, and argot that dominate, that something stinks. While driving
the girl to his house, he points out, time and again, famous Paris sites which
are not what he names them, as if he has never even visited the city in which
resides.

His beautiful wife, Albertine (Carla Marlier), seems, at first almost
saintly, but we soon perceive her as being so placid and cold—so unlike her
loud and foppish husband—that she seems to be hiding something, and later in
the film, undergoes her own kind of transgender transformation. Others, such as
the seeming pedophile Trouscaaillon (Vittorio Caprioli), are even stranger. But
none of them are up to the bad girl tactics of the young rapscallion Zazie.

As the various chases and Gabriel’s performance come together, everyone
and everything explodes into a brutal brawl. But by that time Zazie, tuckered
out, has fallen asleep and misses the brouhaha. As critic Leo Goldsmith
expresses it: “After formenting a revolution, she misses the war.” The next
morning she is whisked away by her now sexually satiated mother just as the
labor strike ends, and the metro opens up its gates.
February
25, 2013
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