As I Am: Françoise Pascal

My Favourite Mauritian

As I Am by Françoise Pascal

Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie 

ISBN: 978-1903490716

So... this is a remarkable book. 

I’ve read a lot of both biographies and autobiographies over the years and there seem to be very different pleasures and rewards associated with this form of writing... it seems to me. On the one hand, for example, a person may not have done very much in their life but a skilled wordsmith on biography duties can use their talent for language and drama to weave a fascinating picture of somebody who just sits around drawing comic strips all day and leads a fairly uneventful life... and make it so interesting you feel compelled to keep reading. In contrast, a person writing their own memoirs can sometimes have little to tell or share with their intended audience and it can all, in some cases, leave you feeling a bit uninspired and flat.

I’m happy to say, though, that Françoise Pascal’s self written (no ghosts here... at least not ghost writers) autobiography is written from the perspective of somebody who has had a very full life and the writer seems to have absolutely no worries about conveying her ups and downs over the years in no uncertain terms.

I first met Françoise earlier in the year, quite by accident in fact, at a Westminster Film Fair (now aggrandized to London Film Memorabilia Convention) where she was signing her book and I went to have a chat and got a signed photograph of her. She’s an absolutely charming lady and as I was talking to her I realised that she was one of those sexual icons of my early youth who I’d never really put  a name to but remembered as “the sexy french girl” from the TV situation comedy Mind Your Language from 1977 and onwards (actually she’s from Mauritius but the sexy part was absolutely true and, I can attest, still is to this day). I would have been 10 at the time that show was on the air and so that kind of makes sense in terms of timing when my hormones were getting a little more antsy than usual.

She’d actually slipped out of my memory for all these years but I had recently seen her in a movie by one of my favourite genre directors Jean Rollin (called The Iron Rose and reviewed here). I found the lady so approachable, chatty and downright charming that, when she was in attendance at a recent screening of another movie she appeared in (Burke and Hare... reviewed here) I went along to the event specifically so I could meet Françoise again and ask her to sign a copy of her autobiography for me. Again, it was an absolute pleasure meeting her and the time had finally come to read her book.

Well, as I said before... Françoise Pascal has led a very full life.

Some people tend to hold back a bit when writing their memoirs and concentrate on the more positive aspects of their life or, at least, the parts of their life they think their fan base want to hear about. However, it soon became very apparent, even from her accounts of her early life on the island of Mauritius, that there was going to be no holding back where Ms. Pascal is concerned. This book is very much a book about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as far as this writer is concerned and while there are some really nice moments and highs in the book, there are also very many terrible low points in her life that most people, I think, would have been less than willing to share... especially in an official autobiography. But this is the absolute correct course to take and her life is presented with no extra frills or polish and, as I’m sure you’ll realise, this makes the book even more compelling and un-put-down-able. 

Ms. Pascal has met a lot of people, from celebrities to princes and right back down to, well, the absolute worst people you would ever want to meet on a dark night... but I don’t want to spoil it for you. She’s had untold experiences which she breezily lays out for you in her book and has survived fires, heartbreak and long term relationships which have tested her spirit but never, it seems to me, broken it.

I was personally surprised when learning of the actions and attitudes of one of my favourite genre actors in regards to the long and stormy relationship he had with Ms. Pascal and it was quite a revelation to me (and no, I’m not going to name him here... buy the book). I know I shouldn’t make the mistake of equating actors and actresses with the roles they play on stage or screen but it’s certainly given me pause for thought and I won’t quite watch his films with the same admiration I did before, I think.

Of course, the author tells her story just as she would chat to you in real life (which is why As I Am is such a good title for the book) and the whole reading experience is completely compelling, compulsive and, despite some of the events depicted, hugely entertaining. The structure of the events occasionally folds back in on itself in some cases when a particularly interesting point is explored in more detail and the occasional use of foreshadowing events in a future chapter is used but it doesn’t take long for the “narrative strands” to right thermselves and steer back to a chronological course when this does happen and the decision to explore those deviations results in a richer reading experience and certainly helps to clarify things later on when they turn up as main points in the text.

My only minor criticism would be that I would like to have seen... not more pictures exactly, but certainly the photographs which were chosen could have been presented in a better light and captioned so you know where you stand with them in regards to relating them back to the author’s personal history. I’m guessing this was a cost issue in terms of the publishers not wanting to go in that direction but I think it would have been worth doing especially since... well... well presented pictures of the gorgeous lady in question is always something we could do with more of. 

At the end of the day, though, it’s not about the illustrations and Ms. Pascal’s words paint a truly interesting picture of her life and certainly mark this book out as one of the more vital autobiographies of recent years. Even if you are not that familiar with the actress yourself, this book is worth seeking out because she has met so many people and done so much and it’s certainly a nice timepiece of everything an autobiography can be in this day and age. Definitely pick this up if you are into reading about a strong woman and the life she has truly lived to the full. 

Francois Pascal’s website, where you can buy this book, is here... http://francoisepascal.co.uk/ 

The Iron Rose (La Rose De Fer)

Thorn Of The Dead

The Iron Rose (La Rose De Fer)
France 1973
Directed by Jean Rollin
Redemption Region 1

Well this is going to be a pretty short review.

I’ve noted on more than one occasion my respect for the writer/director Jean Rollin, who is perhaps best remembered for the spate of surrealist French lesbian vampire movies he gave the world. A true under-appreciated poet of cinema. I recently reviewed his film The Nude Vampire here and discovered it to be another little gem. I’d never seen that or The Iron Rose before and I expressed how much I was looking forward to seeing it.

Well, now that I have, it has to be said that I thought it was the least interesting of the works I’ve seen by him and, frankly, I found it a hard movie to watch. Starting off with a strong scene which made me groan because, once again, it uses a quite strikingly beautiful actress, Françoise Pascal, on Rollin’s favourite beach (yeah, you know the one), and a credit sequence set to a beautiful shot of a young couple kissing on the front of a train, the film then takes us to a crowded wedding reception where a thin, young man recites poetry to catch the eye of the aforementioned, beauty.

After this, the two go on a date and it pretty much, apart from the occasional passer by (such as a clown) becomes a two hander as the protagonists go into a cemetery to eat their picnic, which mostly seems to consist of chocolate, and then descend into a tomb to make love. When they come up for air, night has fallen and it’s here that the film takes on a certain Bunuelian flavour... and when I say that I’m thinking specifically about the impossibility of trying to find a way out of an artificially induced situation like the guests not being able to leave the house in The Exterminating Angel (reviewed here). For, once our sexed up couple leave the tomb, they find it impossible to find their way back out of the cemetery. They are not just locked in, they are caught up in a recurring loop of M. C. Esher-like proportions, coming across the same terrain again and again, even when they go over the wall.

Okay, I admit the movie sounds really interesting, but for some reason this one just didn’t appeal to me. Perhaps it’s because, unlike most of Rollin’s films, it has a storyline (no matter how simple and one note) that you can follow... whereas I’m more used to seeing a Jean Rollin that is mostly impenetrable and which has great and beautiful surrealistic shots which you will remember forever. Here though, I think the shots are merely both really colourful and competent... but with very few standout sequences, apart from the girl naked on a “beach representation” of the cemetery near the end. That’s quite striking but a minor oasis in a desert of dullness as far as I’m concerned... and I really don’t like to say this about Rollin’s work.

There’s an interesting vocal, experimental piece on the soundtrack reminiscent of something György Ligeti or Edgard Varese might have done at some stage in their careers but this really doesn’t give the visuals the lift they need and, in the end, I have to admit I was just waiting for it to finish (I may have started to nod off at some point).

At the end of the day, it’s a well shot but not great Jean Rollin movie. If you’re a fan of this director’s work, and I really am, then you’re going to want to watch this one anyway. This is the first time I had a truly, less than stunned reaction to his work, although Two Orphan Vampires came close. I’m not going to let this put me off tracking down some of the movies I still haven’t seen by him though... but I would warn you to not expect too much from this one and approach cautiously. It’s been called, by one reviewer I respect a lot, Rollin’s first true masterpiece. I disagree with that one, I’m afraid, but that doesn’t mean that you would. Rollin is always worth a look even when he’s churning out stuff like this, is my view. But if you’ve never seen any of his movies before... I really wouldn’t start off with this one.

The Nude Vampire (La Vampire Nue)

Nude For Thought

The Nude Vampire (La Vampire Nue)
France 1970
Directed by Jean Rollin
Redemption Region 1

Given that he’s a director I have quite a lot of time for, I can’t quite believe I’ve been writing this blog almost two and a half years and not got around to reviewing any of Rollin’s films on here before. This probably stems from the fact that any UK editions of his movies are rarely worth buying because of censorship issues (at least that’s been the case in the past). Also because of the annoying issue that whenever a country releases any of his titles, and it’s usually Redemption Films releasing them in some incarnation or other, they usually always choose their releases from the same pot of about 10 or so of his movies, and leave most of the rest unseen.

Probably the best DVD treatments I’ve seen are the Dutch Region 2 boxed editions from Encore (which I think is Redemption again) which were mostly 2 or 3 disc editions with absolutely beautiful transfers and stunning packaging. If you’ve not seen any Rollin before then the seven titles they released are the ones to get. Saying that though, there were two new batches of DVD (and BluRay if that’s your kind o’ thing) releases from the US arm of Redemption just recently and, finally, there were two in this lot that I hadn’t seen before... this one, The Nude Vampire, and The Iron Rose (which I’ll be watching sometime soon.

How to describe the movies of Jean Rollin to anyone who hasn’t seen one before?

Well... he’s always seemed to have had trouble funding his more personal films, like these, which usually deal with vampires, blood and lesbianism with a little bit of sado-masochism thrown in for good measure every now and again. The rest of the time he was usually making porn movies or softcore erotica for other people. I believe Emmanuelle 6 is one of his and “erotic star” Brigitte Lahaie is often found playing in these, plus playing various unclothed vampires in his regular movies... as an aside here, I’d like to say her performance as the title character in Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl is absolutely brilliant at the end of the movie and raises the acting in a Rollin movie past anything else I’ve seen from his filmography.

He also writes books of his obsession with nymph vampires, often involving the characters of a pair of sexy twins, living or undead, who often turn up in some form or another in quite a few of his movies. They’re in this one and at least one of the twins is one of the two introduced in the outrageous shooting clowns car chase scene which opens one of Rollin’s more well known films, Requiem For A Vampire (Vierges et vampires).

It would be true, I think, to say that the acting in most of Rollin's films is quite poor, to be honest. Usually, even though I don’t understand the French, the delivery often seems lacking and the scripts, although languishing perhaps within the realm of something that Michael Moorcock might write when he’s feeling particularly inscrutable, are usually quite dull too... not that there’s usually much pretence of a story in Rollin’s films.

All this is of absolutely no consequence if you’re watching a Rollin film, however, because it’s all about the sheer beauty and surrealism of the shots. You may be put off by a bad special effect (the guns being fired in this one are less technically competent, and their victims less believable, than the average three year old, for example) but you will at many points be startled by the sheer visual poetry and purity of some of the imagery... whether it be two lady vampires dancing to a phonograph, a vampire woman emerging from a grandfather clock to stab you through the chest with her spiky, augmented nipples or two young ladies making use of the whips and chains in an old castle. The imagery in a Rollin film is everything and you will, if you are a lover of the way images are designed in film, find yourself regularly gobsmacked by the richness of his creative and sometimes provocative palette when watching his films. I think his first film, the black and white Rape Of The Vampire (Le Viol Du Vampire) even caused a bit of a riot on its preview, although I can’t now find any evidence of that when I looked for it. I can never quite figure out if the Jason Schwartsman character in CQ is modelled after Rollin or Polanski (or possibly a mixture of the two).

Now I’d read somewhere that The Nude Vampire is not one of Rollin’s best films and, after having seen the thing for myself... I’d have to say that, actually, it is another Rollin classic which I’m sure I will watch as often as I have his other works. If only because of the first twenty minutes which is absolutely loaded with devastatingly gorgeous imagery such as naked blood transfusions and people wearing either colourful hoods or animal masks and also, and this is kind of unusual for Rollin, a fairly accessible storyline in the making which is, yeah okay, quite simple, but which is a lot more than you might get in many of Rollin’s other movies... his films tend to have great portions of their running times without any dialogue in them as a rule.

Seriously, the colours and lighting in this film,especially at the start, looks like Mario Bava has been let loose with a box of crayons and then Rollin has copied them but filtered them through the eyes of Max Ernst... there’s a visual opulence that almost defies description filling the frames and, to be honest, the story is the last thing on your mind as you watch the mystery of a captive vampire, a curious son and a suicide cult unfold.

As the film progresses, some of the story, what there is of it, drags a little and we are faced with the dilemma of a fair amount of nudity on display (true to form) but not by the title character. In fact, as the clash between the main male protagonist’s father, who is seeking the secret of eternal life through study and experimentation on the female vampire he has captive, and the clan of vampires who seek to rescue her from his (and his scientist friends) clutches reaches its zenith, you are then hit with the concept that really, they are not vampires at all and only appear so because of the way the human characters have viewed them.

So, yeah, there’s no way of getting around this but... for a film called The Nude Vampire... there really aren't any nude vampires actually in it, if truth be told. It has to be said, I think. Although you could obviously stretch a point and say that fang bearing, blood drinking creatures are, by definition, automatically vampires and the nudity in question is their naked soul at odds with the primitive superstitions and prejudices of mankind. You could say that, yeah... but someone might punch you in the mouth so you’re probably best keeping quiet on the metaphorical front on this one maybe.

Nevertheless... vampires or no, The Nude Vampire is one heck of a good Jean Rollin art piece, as you might expect from him, and if Rollin is your thing then I really don’t think you’ll be disappointed by this one. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the most accessible in tone (although certainly in the pretence of a linear storyline, it is) and there are other Rollin movies I’d point you in the direction of first if you’ve never seen one before.. but this movie doesn’t seem to deserve the reputation it’s been left with in recent decades, it seems to me. Also, for fans of this artists cinema, it bridges the gap contextually for you between his first feature length production, the aforementioned Rape Of The Vampire (Le Viol Du Vampire) and his next one after this, The Shiver Of The Vampires (Le Frisson Des Vampires), being as it’s his second feature and his first shot in colour.

If you’re not familiar with the work of this French auteur then go watch something else like Le Viol Du Vampire or Fascination first. If, however, you’re already a Jean Rollin devotee, you really can’t go wrong in picking this one up.