Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Joëlle Coeur)

With the exceptions of Brigitte Lahaie and Marie-Pierre Castel, no actress was ever as suited to Jean Rollin’s particular cinematic landscape than the unforgettable Joëlle Coeur. Unlike Lahaie and Castel, who both appeared in multiple Jean Rollin features, Coeur only worked with the legendary director three times and only once on a film in which the director signed his own name.



Information on the delectable Coeur is extremely hard to come by. The IMDB doesn’t list a date or place of birth and has no other information listed besides her filmography, which spans a relatively short eight year period from the early to late seventies. A glance over her film credits shows her as an actress who almost exclusively appeared in the French sexploitation films that populated cinemas before hardcore all but buried the genre in the late seventies. Rollin himself would mention that it was the legalization of hardcore that would cause Joëlle Coeur to retire from the screen as the new permissiveness held no interest for her and, as Rollin recalled in Encores The Demoniacs booklet, “She did right to have never taken the plunge.”



So what is that that makes Joëlle Coeur, an actress with less than twenty mostly forgotten films to her credit, so special and memorable? Simply put, there is something delightfully tongue in cheek and playful in the sexuality Coeur presented on the screen and I suspect that had she been around in the silent period she could have been one of the screen’s greatest physical comedians. Rollin would refer to her as, “a superb creature” in Encore’s booklet and that he never knew of another actress who knew, “how to make better use of her body”, and it is that remarkable physicality that comes out in her performances, especially with her remarkable turn as the ferocious ‘Tina the Wrecker’ in The Demoniacs.



Coeur all but demolishes the screen in The Demoniacs, delivering an performance overflowing with humor, charisma and sexuality. Fearless and with a wonderful go for broke attitude so often missing from the screen, Coeur makes it impossible for anyone watching to take their eyes off of her in The Demoniacs. The fact that she would only work in film for a few years after is regrettable, and still feels like a major loss for French cinema.



The actress whom, as Rollin recalled in his commentary, had a perfect and “great image” for the screen first appeared on the screen as Joelle Faguet in a small role in Jean Desville’s Jeux Pour Couples Infideles (also known as Hot and Blue). Just a year later she would make her debut in a Rollin film with a large role in his delightful Michel Gentil signed Jeunes Filles Impudiques. Later that year she would also appear in what would become one of her most popular and memorable films, Max Pecas I Am Frigid…Why? (don’t you miss the seventies?), a film that featured another one of Rollin’s most memorable heroines, Sandra Julien.
Coeur would continue working steadily throughout the mid seventies, including a couple of times for important French auteur Jose Benazeraf, before hooking up with Rollin again on The Demoniacs and Tout le Monde il en a Deux (Fly me the French Way, Bacchanales Sexuelles).



Describing her memorably in Virgins and Vampires as a “Lust provoking animal woman” Rollin clearly has fond memories of Coeur and marveled at the way in The Demoniacs commentary how she allowed him to use “her body like it was a statue.” The director would also compare her to legendary Brigitte Lahaie on the commentary track and pointed out that he even went so far as to frame Lahaie the same way he had Couer in The Grapes of Death a few years down the road.
Joëlle Coeur's final film credit according to the IMDB occurred in 1978 with Michel Lemoine’s Jeunes filles en Extase, a film sadly all but lost in time alongside most of her other work from the seventies. While never a major star, Joëlle Coeur is a legend to fans of Jean Rollin’s unique brand of fantastic cinema. Perhaps my favorite thing ever written about her was Tim Lucas’ point in his review of Bacchanales Sexuelles for Video Watchdog 31 that the delightful actress, “probably could have carried the film without a plot” a terrifically dead-on and resonate statement on a film figure who was deserving of more of a career than she got.

The Hidden Cinema of Jean Rollin: Tout le monde il en a deux (1974)

The most widely seen of the Michel Gentil signed films, 1974’s Tout le monde il en a deux (also known as Bacchanales Sexuelles and Fly me the French Way) is an overlong, sluggish, sometime visually striking production that is more of a curiosity in Jean Rollin’s filmography rather than a successful film.






Shot fairly cheaply for producer Lionel Wallman in early 1974 between The Demoniacs and Lips of Blood, Tout le monde il en a deux would mark the final time Rollin would work with the delightful Joelle Coeur and the first time he would work with the iconic Annie Belle, who makes her big screen debut here under the name Annie Brilland. The film also features The Castel Twins in small roles (tragic that they were able to appear in this film and not The Demoniacs) as well as the ever-present Willy Braque.








The plot of Tout le monde il en a deux concerning a self proclaimed sorceresses named Madame Malvena, who is kidnapping young girls for use in her club of the ‘Admirers of Pure Flesh’ might have been interesting had it not been basically put in place to service a seemingly never ending series of over-long and poorly edited soft-core sexual encounters. For every visually enticing and interesting shot Rollin manages here (and there are some beautiful moments in the film) there a dozens of flat and unappealing moments that show a filmmaker who is clearly bored and, I would suspect, more than a little disappointed.









Outside of the films cast, who deserve better material, the main interest for Rollin’s fans will be the opportunity to get a great look at his own apartment where much of film was shot. Decorated with posters from his films and even some older props, these scenes will prove delightful to Rollin devotees, even though finally they serve as a reminder to how inferior this film is to Rollin’s previous work.







A couple of different versions of the film have been released. I have only seen the long version Wallman prepared under the title Bacchanales Sexuelles from Synapse Films, and have wondered if I would like the film more in its shorter version that Rollin had more of a hand in editing. That said, Synapse's DVD is fine and contains a fairly nice looking widescreen print of the film with optional English subtitles.












Jean Rollin recalled to Peter Blumenstock in Video Watchdog 31 that financially the film was “very successful”, but it is clear that it is not a film that he has a lot of fond feelings for. All but ignored in Virgins and Vampires and the one film in VSOM’s VHS series in the mid nineties Rollin declined to do an introduction for, Tout le monde il en a deux is more than anything else a reminder of a time Rollin had to sacrifice his personal visions for financial reasons. A better than average sox-core sexploitation film perhaps, but a disappointing work nonetheless.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Annie Belle)

With porcelin white skin, hair cut close to the scalp, volutptous body and undeniable charisma, Annie Belle was quite unlike any other figure in seventies exploitation cinema. Born in France in 1956 as Annie Brilland, Belle proved herself to be one of the most memorable, if often overlooked, screen goddesses of the seventies with a series of varied roles in both French and Italian cinema.
Interviewed in the nineties for the Italian book 99 Donne, Belle recalled that her career began to take shape when she attended the Rue Blanche Acting School in Paris under master Virilo, whom she described as being, “a great cinema and theater actor.” Coming from a family of engineers, acting might have seemed an odd career choice for the young Brilland but she was quite a natural at it, and her manager led her to her first role before she had even turned eighteen, in Jean Rollin’s Bacchanales Sexuelles (Fly Me The French Way) in 1974, where she had a small but memorable role that would endear her to the director who would cast her in her first starring role just a year later.



Billed as Annie Briand in Rollin’s hypnotic and poetic Lips of Blood in
1975, Belle showed herself to be quite a mesmerizing presence and one wonders in hindsight how her career might have gone had she stay in France making movies. Belle relocated to Italy shortly after Lips of Blood though, and within a year she was on her way to becoming for a brief time one of the most in demand actresses in Italian exploitation cinema, with three major films occurring in 1976 alone.



Of the three Italian films Belle appeared in ’76, the erotic Laure is probably the best known thanks to Severin’s recent special edition DVD of it. The film would mark one of a handful Belle shot with actor Al Cliver, the man she would become involved with off screen for several years in the mid to late seventies. Remembering Laure as being, “not very good”, Belle seemed to have better feelings towards Massimo Dallamano’s End of Innocence, a film in which she was granted a co-writing credit on.



Calling Dallamano, “a great professional and talented man”, Belle's great work in End of Innocence is unfortunately hard to see in an English language friendly version, although it is one of the key works of her career.



One of Belle’s most controversial and enduring pictures finished out 1976, and thankfully Brunello Rondi’s audacious Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle (a film that teamed Belle with lovely Laura Gemser) is readily available now in a beautiful uncut print also courtesy of Severin. It would be the first of a few films Belle would shoot with Gemser and in the 99 Donne interview she remembers the iconic beauty very fondly.



Annie Belle continued to work steadily throughout the seventies in both erotic and comedic pictures. In 1980 she appeared in one of the most notorious Italian productions of the period, Ruggero Deodato’s House on The Edge of the Park, a brutal but unforgettable film that Belle remembered as being very, “cruel”, but also very, “interesting.”



Belle would also work a couple of times with legendary Joe D’Amato in the early eighties, a director Belle absolutely adored. Calling him a great director with actors, and going so far to say that he could have indeed been, “one of the greatest filmmakers ever”, had he the right sized budgets and support, it’s a shame Belle and D’Amato weren’t teamed for better films, although there is much to admire in both Absurd (1981) and The Alcove (1984).
Personal problems slowed Annie Belle’s career down in the eighties and by the end of the decade she retired from the screen for good. Returning to France, Belle is now reportedly doing well after going to school to get her degree in Psychology. She currently works in Social Work helping others who have had to battle with personal demons in their lives.
Although she is not often considered one of Jean Rollin’s premiere actresses, this is really because they only worked together twice. Annie Belle is an unforgettable figure and as more of her films become more readily available, the cult around her will only grow.