by Primula Bond
Let my mouth go where it wants to.
I used to sit in my old boyfriend’s caravan in a muddy field near the cliffs in Devon, watching this film on YouTube. I also watched the video accompanying the track Justify My Love, over and over again. The singer’s lust oozed out of her as she beckoned her wide-eyed companions to lick and pleasure her and each other. Like the singer, I couldn’t get enough of it.
I’ll hit you like a truck.
I place the photograph back in the case. I’ll follow up the text and try to call Polly as soon as this shoot is done.
I’ll teach you how to—
Suddenly the clapper-board is operated and someone yells ‘And action!’ So they still use the technicalities to compartmentalise the scenes that will eventually be screened. I guess the undercurrent, the flowing of fiction into fact and back again, will be incorporated later. As the slate clacks, the music on the video screen changes to the opening of Justify My Love. Someone can read my mind.
The young nun girl, Cécile, sits up on the sofa. She’s lit by the fake sunlight, but she could be me in that draughty, cold caravan on the cliffs, waiting for her bulky boyfriend to come back from the pub. She’s staring at the horny pop star up on the screen, all milky skin, mussed-up bleached hair and black eye make-up as she squats in a hotel corridor and touches herself.
No, not like that.
Cécile’s hand is running down the side of her face. A silky strand of hair escapes the stern hairband and falls over one eye. Her finger hooks into her open mouth and she bites down on it.
The silver-haired man, Valmont, suddenly notices me and the runner girl gawping in the background. He slams the bottle of wine down on the table and calls ‘Cut!’ The crew appears to pay no attention. They continue filming, and holding up sound booms, and checking monitors.
All part of the illusion, then. Saying ‘cut’ in real life doesn’t work, either.
Cécile’s hand has run down over her breast. Her feet drop to the floor and she parts her knees. On the screen above the fireplace, the superstar lies back on a hotel bed and opens her stockinged legs for a wide-eyed, beautiful, androgynous young man.
I don’t wanna be your sister.
Valmont extricates himself from the scene and comes towards me. He shakes my hand. His eyes are a bright Paul Newman blue, the same colour as his faded shirt, but he’s several years older than Gustav.
‘Bonjour. Serena Folkes? I am Alain, the director. You will see that name on your invoice when I pay you. But while you are on set I am the Comte de Valmont.’
‘Valmont is the villain of the piece, right? So you’re one of the protagonists as well as directing this film?’ I ask, flipping off my lens cap.
‘Yes, and no. It’s not so simple.’ Alain waggles his hand to show comme ci, comme ça. ‘I don’t think the word “villain” is correct. The way Malkovich played Valmont he had a streak of evil, but in real life the man is charming.’
‘You mean the actor is charming, or the character?’ I frown as I get out the larger Canon.
‘Both, actually.’ The director lifts his hands. ‘He is one of my idols. He directed a stage play of Les Liaisons which deliberately blurred the edges. It was designed like a rehearsal studio. The actors all watched each other, even if they were not in a scene, which gave it the claustrophobia and awkwardness of a masterclass. And the letters were transmitted by text and iPad. I wanted to go further with that idea. Not the iPads, but the illusion. Install the cast in a comfortable château then ask them to almost entirely improvise. They know the outline of each scenario. But since everyone in the story is tricking someone else, or two-timing, or spoiling things, why not have the cast doing that, too, even when they’re off set learning their lines or resting?’
The young girl beside me starts to cough. ‘Which means they will be having much sex, mademoiselle.’
I glance at her. Her angular face has gone bright pink, as if the words came out by accident.
The director’s piercing blue eyes laser through her.
‘C’est ça! So because they have total freedom I have one rule to keep them focused. All actors are addressed as their character for the length of the shoot.’
‘I guess that’s what they call the method?’ I remark, and Valmont nods approvingly. I touch the runner’s arm. ‘Can you show me where to go next? Can you come with me, er—’
‘Je m’appelle Cécile,’ she replies quickly, flipping at the paper on her clipboard.
‘Another Cécile?’
She tries to navigate towards the window, glancing again at the director. Alain, Valmont, whatever his name is. ‘They call me Cici.’
‘Our pretty assistant has the same name as the virginal heroine. Sometimes I use her, to make them interchangeable. I forgot to mention that the crew are subject to the same rule. They are here to organise filming and lighting and sound, and record our work, but they can also take part if they like, or be dragged into a scene if someone demands it. I’ll decide in the final edit if it fits.’
I glance down at my Canon and select a medium range lens. ‘This has to be the most interesting brief ever. So, monsieur. Just so I’m clear before I set up. No real names. Everyone in character, all the time?’
‘Don’t question it. Don’t fight it. You are the voyeur photographer. The bee on the ceiling.’
‘Fly on the wall?’
Valmont smiles. ‘You can eavesdrop, spy through curtains or half-open doors, listen to conversations and seductions. There are cameras in every room, some with operators, some not. We are living the story. Everyone sleeps and eats under the same roof. We are locked in this château until we start scratching at the cage to get out.’
‘Something will blow soon,’ Cici murmurs. ‘Some of us already are half-mad.’
I screw my lens on. ‘You live here too?’
The director whispers something into the girl’s hair and she blushes.
‘Of course she lives here,’ he says, ruffling her hair into little spikes so she looks like a new-hatched chick. ‘Nobody leaves until it’s in the can.’
He takes a pen off Cici’s clipboard and writes something on the paper. She peers at it, and her elfin face goes bright red again. Then he waves his hand to dismiss us. The nun Cécile and Gercourt remain exactly where they were, one standing by the fire, one sitting on the sofa with her hand now thrust between her legs. Not moving, and not speaking to each other.
My runner girl leads me towards a door beside the fireplace, and as I pass this part of the main salon I take a few more shots. Gercourt and Cécile keep perfectly still while Alain/Valmont peers for a moment into the monitor of one of the big cameras. Then the two of them turn stiffly towards the maestro as he re-enters the scene with an assertive click-tap of his Church’s brogues on the parquet.
The clapperboard goes again and everyone jumps to attention. Valmont takes up exactly where he left off, roaring at Gercourt.
I can already feel a little of Château Claustrophobia’s insanity infecting me, and I’m going to reflect this in my approach. I intend to entrap the viewer. Then trip them. Let them think they are in a domestic scenario, witnessing a real argument, then pan down to a trail of wires and cables snaking over the floor. A pair of head mikes hanging off a trolley handle.
As Cici and I retreat, I exaggerate the exposure to show how the natural sunshine is bleached by the glare of electricity.
Cici shuts the door behind us. ‘I tell you the story as we go. The original Liaisons was written in the form of letters.’
We are in another dusty hallway. Delicious cooking smells waft towards us from the end of a long stone passage, but Cici leads me away, up a flight of stairs winding up to a wide landing dominated by a beautiful arched window. From here you can see over the formal gardens and the lake, the high grey wall bordering the property, and the haze of Paris just beyond.
‘So, the histoire. Valmont and Marquise de Merteuil hatch the plot. They were lovers once. Maybe sometimes they sti
ll are. But La Marquise wants to make trouble for Cécile, la petite religieuse, because her mother has brought her out of the couvent to marry Comte de Gercourt, and he, Gercourt, was once the lover of La Marquise but he is now bored with her. So she is angry.’
‘So the Marquise is the scheming older woman.’
My God. The Margot character. Which makes her ex-lover Valmont who? Gustav? Or Pierre?
‘C’est ça. She wants Valmont to take the flower of Cécile so that she will be too dirty for Gercourt. But Valmont is not interested. He desires another woman, Madame de Tourvel. In fact, he sleeps with her and falls in love with her. She is his weakness.’
‘So Valmont is not such a villain. He knows how to love.’
‘Well, it’s strange love, because he still takes Cécile also.’
‘But a love story nevertheless. Do you think they’d have the energy for all that playing around and infidelity in real life?’
‘The energy, yes. The endless time, no. There is much ennui in this story. They don’t have enough to do.’ Cici rips at the corner of her call sheet. ‘Moi, I believe they would all end up killing each other!’
I laugh and go to sit on the broad window seat for a moment and stare at the distant pencil prick of the Eiffel Tower. My Gustav was a baby, a child and a teenager in that city. What did he look like growing up? All the family photographs from that time were destroyed by the fire that killed his parents.
His silky black hair was probably too long, probably the bane of his mother’s life. He was not yet shaving properly, but already kissing girls and smoking Gauloises and gabbling in French to his friends, swinging his long leg over a bike or a mobylette to scamper off over the cobbles to school or college. He must have been cute, fresh and naughty.
I get out my phone. There’s still no answer from Polly, so I text Gustav.
These people could be you. Us. They are living and breathing this film. It’s giving me the creeps!
Cici touches the diamond ring that sparkles as I hold my phone up to the light. ‘Beautiful.’
My body tugs with longing for Gustav. He’s too far away today. If he’s going to be late back tonight I’ll keep busy for as long as possible.
Cici taps my arm and beckons me to follow her. She leads me up to the next floor, which consists of smaller, cosier servants’ quarters, and the next hour is spent taking photographs of secondary cast and crew up here, mostly sleeping, eating, gossiping, playing card games or, oddly, knitting.
The final door on this floor gives way to an enormous bathroom under the eaves, and in the rolltop tub by the window a big man with a bushy beard is lying back in the greenish water. Above him the spindly white body of the nun Cécile, wrenched from the drawing room to the attic, is partly obscured by clouds of hot steam as he holds her above the water long enough for me to get several fantastic silhouette shots, before he lowers her on to his huge, erect penis.
‘That’s the dirty gardener, Artolan! The actor has done Shakespeare in Stratford, would you believe?’ Cici whispers. ‘But here, finally, with the help of Cécile, he is getting clean.’
The craziness of this scenario starts me giggling helplessly. I snatch up my unopened camera bags, and Cici collapses into laughter too as we run down another set of stairs and into another wide corridor which passes over the main salon.
One side of this corridor is bordered by glass walls overlooking the garden. The other is flanked by closed double doors.
‘So who lives along here, Cici?’ I ask, catching my breath. ‘Are these VIP quarters?’
‘This is the wing of Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil.’ She stops laughing. ‘But sometimes we sleep along here, too.’
We pace slowly past a set of closed double doors and approach a second. The old floorboards creak beneath our feet.
‘So tell me more about those two. What schemes do they cook up that are so awful?’
‘Madame La Marquise is mad on sex. All the men on set she likes. How do you call it, she’s un couguar?’ Cici tries to close the second door, which is slightly ajar. ‘Don’t go in there, mademoiselle. La Marquise is a diva. My boyfriend says she’s fierce if she’s disturbed. She might be sleeping or – otherwise occupied.’
The rain has stopped and the real sun is shining through the huge windows behind me, trying to push its light into the dark room. The pervasive music from hidden speakers all over the château is now a kind of funky salsa overlaid with a remix of Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares for Me.
My phone vibrates. Gustav has replied. Je suis Valmont, qui trouve son amour véritable.
Valmont finds his true love. I text Gustav back. Et alors? Qui est ton amour véritable?
He answers immediately. Toi, bien sur! Tu es la Madame de Tourvel.’
‘Serena, come away, s’il te plaît.’ Cici starts pulling at me. ‘You must be hungry. Chef is making coq au vin. Good for photographs.’
‘In a moment, sure. But I’m intrigued by what happens in these rooms. Can’t we just explore a little more? Tell me what happens in the end of the book?’
The girl shakes her head, ripping at the corner of the sheets on her clipboard.
‘Please, mademoiselle. Let me show you the catering! Fantastic catering we have.’
‘I’m a professional voyeur, Cici. I seek out the naughtiest, most private activities which should be hidden. I explore everywhere. The darkest corners.’ I push open the door with my foot. ‘And I suspect the bedrooms will be more interesting than the kitchen.’
At first, like the salon downstairs, this big room looks empty. Bare floorboards, shutters half closed at the windows, a lit bateau with a white muslin canopy hanging like a waterfall from the ceiling.
The music is piped into here, too, and changes to a slow, sensuous Argentine tango. Now I can see that it’s not entirely empty. There is someone dancing near the window. From here all I can see is a sinewy woman’s back and tendrils of wild black hair falling down as she winds her arms above her head and shimmies on long bare legs across the dusty floorboards.
She’s wearing a short baby-doll negligee in black or dark navy, I can’t see in this light. She moves beautifully to the Latin arrangement of the music. If you were walking down a backstreet one steamy night in downtown Buenos Aires you might spy a woman like her, through a chipped blue door, being undressed, then laid across a bar and ravaged.
I lift my camera and take a couple of shots of the way the light slants across her body from the wooden shutters. As I pan round the room, I spot a film camera and a couple of folded up studio lights parked in the corner. No obvious cameraman, but the dancing woman is not alone. A surfer dude is sitting astride a bentwood chair, leaning his chin on his arms. From here he looks stark naked. He has long blonde hair which would be girlish if he didn’t have beautiful swimmer’s shoulders. When he stands at a silent gesture from her, all vestiges of femininity vanish, because there’s a huge bulge visible in his tight tartan boxers.
Cici grabs at my arm. ‘You have to stop them! That’s La Marquise. And the boy – he’s my – he’s Danceny!’
I step further into the room and the boy sees me. The dancing woman must have noticed him glancing across her shoulder, but she doesn’t turn. In fact, she steps closer to him and starts running her hands up his body.
Cici gasps. I can hear tears catching in her throat.
‘Remind me. Who is Danceny in the story?’ I whisper. ‘Why are you so upset?’
‘Danceny is the young man who the little nun Cécile falls for. But La Marquise, this cougar, she sleeps with him, too.’ Cici keeps tugging me like a child. ‘But that actor is my boyfriend.’
I hesitate. Cici is waggling her hand frantically from behind me, trying to catch the boy’s attention. He looks directly at both of us, his face expressionless.
As the dark-haired temptress runs her hands over him, caressing the bulge in his shorts, Danceny keeps his eyes on poor little Cici. It must be agony for her to see this, but I suspect this goes
on all the time. I also suspect that Valmont has rammed home that if she doesn’t like it, she knows where the door is.
There’s no one directing this scene, and no one filming, at least as far as I can see.
‘But you’re disobeying Valmont’s rule, Cici! You must leave your life behind while you’re in here, n’est-ce pas?’ I press my mouth against her hot cheek. ‘So what do we think? Are these two rehearsing, shooting a scene, or are they just having a quick screw while they wait to be called on?’
She leans her forehead against mine for a moment. ‘All what you say. But also none of it. Valmont says we can do whatever we like while we’re here, but ça ne marche pas, because we must stop or start the moment he tells us.’
I watch the woman’s hand diving into the boy’s boxers now. ‘What you’re saying is, you have to go with the flow?’
She shrugs sadly. ‘Qu’est-ce que ça va dire?’
‘Er. In French you’d say, suivez le mouvement? That’s what is happening in this château. Reality and illusion, flowing seamlessly.’ I pinch her cheek to try and get her to smile back. ‘Either you enter into the spirit of it, or you walk out.’
I train my camera on the couple again. The woman has a sensational body, and now I’m seeing more clearly through my viewfinder I’m certain I recognise her. The tumbling black hair, the flex of muscle in her spine, the tempting rise of her big breasts in the flimsy little nightie. I’ve seen this body before.
I step closer to the bed. The floorboards creak loudly again. I’m not sure if the couple has heard my footfall through the music, but even if they have, surely Valmont has warned them I’ll be filming today. The boy knows I’m here, and the woman isn’t bothered. The little satin garment rises up over her naked buttocks as she hooks her leg round the boy’s thigh. His eyes shift away from Cici and fix on the woman who is charming the pants off him. Cici gives a kind of strangled sob. The woman turns, her hands gripping the boy’s shoulders, and her black eyes flash over her shoulder. First annoyance, then a questioning raise of her eyebrows, then a big, pleased grin spreads across her face. I can almost feel her warm, wet lips fastening on to mine.
