Jigsaw feeling... The Exquisite Cadaver (1969), with Judy Matheson, Festival of Fantastic Films, Manchester

The more I think about it as I think it’s a fantastic piece of art… Three wonderful parts for women. all very good actresses, well at least the other two!

The very modest and very talented, Judy Matheson

 

There is no doubt that watching a film with an audience makes the experience richer and more emotionally engaging. That word, engagement, does so much heavy lifting these days, especially in the media world I live in where we fixate over how to truly measure it. Here, in what one of the film’s stars, Judy Jarvis (nee Matheson) described as probably the UK premiere for a film rarely seen anywhere for the last half century, I sat as the audience of cinephiles were absorbed in silence as they watched this most engrossing tale at the Festival of Fantastic Films.

“Fantastic” has, of course a double meaning as many of the films on this splendidly eclectic programme were not only Fantastic but Fabulous too, with others just beyond the descriptive reach of either word although Marian Marsh and John Barrymore were definitely both in Svengali (1931), the deeply “pre-code” first film of the day and, incidentally, I’m still having anxious flashbacks… “run Marian, run as fast as you can and do not look back!”

The Exquisite Cadaver was definitely the most fabulous and fantastic film especially when watching it in the company of 25% of the original cast. I think Judy was slightly apprehensive about how it would be viewed but she needn’t have worried, it’s a cerebral film and one that was exceptionally well choreographed by its director and co-writer Vicente Aranda (not a Svengali, just a very smart man!) known for his considered and personal films which included a long working relationship with the great Victoria Abril, and hits such as Forbidden Love (1991) and Forbidden Love/Cambio de Sexo (1976) – both with Abril – along with Lolita’s Club (2007) and The Blood-Splattered Bride (1972). Not bad for a man who didn’t direct his first film until his forties and, as Judy pointed out, is listed as an influence by Pedro Almodóva and many more.

Capucine

For this film he cast the legendary Capucine, whose next film was Fellini’s Satyricon (1970), established Spanish actor Teresa Gimpera, perhaps best known for The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), and the darkly handsome Argentine, Carlos Estrada whose first film was in 1954 and last in 1999. To complete his quartet of characters Aranda selected a young British actress whose only previous film experience had been in a bit part in Gregory Peck’s The Chairman (1969), Judy Matheson.

I met up with Judy before the screening and we talked about the film and her early career. Having learned her craft at drama school Judy joined the company at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre, the oldest performing theatre in the UK, with whom she had toured the USA performing in a triumvirate of Shakespeare plays, Hamlet, Measure for Measure and Romeo and Juliet with Jane Asher as the latter, who’s fab boyfriend Paul McCartney once joined them on Jane’s 21^st birthday.

There’s so much luck in my life. There was a little bit of imposter’s syndrome… the other actors were very serious and intimidating, I wasn’t quite ready for that.

Judy Matheson now Judy Jarvis

Judy is remarkably honest and modest but I think she is self-aware and recognises the stages of learning in her career. Working in repertory theatre was a way to get your Equity card but it also gave you a fast-track to the visceral learnings only being dropped into the deep end can provide. The American tour must have been the richest of experiences with Judy getting to meet Robert Kennedy, Louis Armstrong and many others. Meeting a Beatle must have felt almost routine in what was, as Judy says, the most brilliant first job!

Back in London, one of her fellow cast members, Janet Key, put her in touch with the agent Hazel Malone, whose roster included the cream of a new wave of up-and-coming British talent: Susan George, Judy Geeson, Malcolm McDowall, Richard O’Sullivan, Robin Askwith, Carol White and Luan Peters. Judy made an immediate impression with Malone and, as her next job was to prove, her eloquence and emotional intelligence helped her to establish common ground very quickly.

One of the things she sent Judy for was Vicente Aranda’s latest project, The Exquisite Cadaver. He was looking for a young English actress and after meeting Judy, cast her without a screen test, after which she was flown to Spain for fittings and what turned into an incredibly enjoyable, glamorous six-month production. Whilst this speaks of the budget Aranda had at his disposal, the film is so polished and well shot, there was also distributor pressure for some reshooting of “sexier” scenes as if these for performers could get any more eye-catching. They also asked for the film to be retitled Las Crueles a sexier title with a nod to Cluzet’s Les Diaboliques.

She was cast out of some 500 others up for this role (according to IMDB) and to get such a meaty part with equal screen time as these three more experienced performers shows how much Aranda saw in her. But there is, indeed, something about Judy and to this we can now add The English Abril… an actress who can emanate conflicting emotions from an almost unknowable core. She was clearly on the same page as Aranda and, as she points out how much harder it is for young actors now who have to audition via smart phone, back in the age of the landline, she was able to meet directors talking to them in depth, discussing ideas and finding that common ground. Not so luck but intellect.

Aranda was very considered and intellectually precise, he clearly had a deep vision for the kind of film he wanted to make as well as the kind of performer who he needed. The connection they made was key to the film’s success, after all, you know what you’re going to get with Capucine, but not from a relatively inexperienced English actress in Spain. His trust was palpably rewarded.

This is patient film making requiring discipline and perfect teamwork in front of and behind the camera. The title refers to the practice of assembling a collection of words or images from a number of people none of whom knows what the other has done. Invented by the surrealist movement, leading light André Breton reported that the exquisite cadaver started in fun, but became eventually enriching presumably by being either a mess or revelatory. Here we have four characters in search of meaning and a puzzle with four moving parts that includes so much that is open to interpretation; a real challenge to the audience to wrestle our presumptions away from the narrative we expect and the people we think they look and act, like.

Carlos feels the heat from Capucine

The film begins with Esther seemingly about to take the ultimate action of self-determination… walking towards a railway line and gently placing her head on the track as a freight train rapidly approaches… We then switch to Barcelona and a fractious publishing company where an executive referred to only as The Editor (Carlos Estrada) is in the middle of putting one of his writers in his place. It’s no accident that the character carries this title, he’s trying to control his existence, cutting out the sections he doesn’t like and imposing his own will, as far as possible on those around him. His pomposity is punctured by the arrival of a yellow (Giallo?) box containing what appears to be the hand of a young woman, although he firstly balls out the writer assuming it’s his “joke” and then quickly tells his secretary that it’s wax. All the same, he takes the hand and buries it.

At home he is also shown up as something of a stuffed shirt as his two boys shoot him with toy guns and ask him far too many questions about their pet tortoise, which he calls a reptile. He’s reminded of this when the poor creature dies and, in a pure Almodóvan moment, he throws it over into next door’s garden.

Also well aware of her old man’s tumultuous struggle with calm is his wife (Teresa Gimpera) who has endless patience coupled with growing suspicions, especially after a second yellow parcel arrives. Too panicked to open the parcel he walks into town and leaves it on a bench hoping someone will steal it, but it ends up back at the house where his wife opens it to find a dress and a photograph of a woman, Lucia Fonte (Capucine) not, as we expected, Esther. The Editor’s explanations do not convince his wife and she begins to follow him when she notices a glamorous woman in a chauffeur-driven Citroen tracking him as well.

The Editor gets driven by Lucia – calling herself Parker, so much misdirection – to her mansion where she has the strangest of encounters with him. She says she has an artificial hand, did she cut it off to scare him?  She makes him take LSD and leads him deep into the house listening to recording of Esther’s voice before revealing her perfectly preserved body in a fridge. It’s not a tiny British fridge but nor is it a grand American one, but it’s just about Judy sized and she must have struggled to stay cool in such a crushed position.

The Editor wakes up at home on his couch, was it a dream – did anything actually happen?

Lucia had called his wife to her house after, she says, The Editor, turned up looking for her… neither wife nor watcher are now sure who or what to believe. There follows a neat Antonioni-esque moment at the park when Mr and Mrs Editor utterly fail to communicate, talking in turn as the focus is pulled from one profile to the other. All the while, young men are flying a toy plane – it buzzes around like nagging doubt before landing on the couple and being snapped into pieces by The Editor, just like our constructed theories about the narrative.

In and out of focus: Teresa Gimpera and Carlos Estrada

Finally, we begin to discover the relationship Esther had with The Editor, with their initial meeting in a hotel and a fascinating interplay between a seemingly carefree young woman, counting what she calls sweets but what are treatments for her cancer. She asks him his star sign before saying hers is Cancer, another double meaning… in a world where reality has simply fallen through the floor. Later she will meet Lucia in a similar setting, and the two will begin a relationship after she has had her heart broken by The Editor’s unforgiving red pen.

There’s another fascinating scene with Esther and The Editor walking near a cliff, she says she could take the step to oblivion and, testing her, she takes ten paces back, removing her shoes and throwing them over and down, the final step made only conceptually this time. Is the hand Esther’s, did she die on the railway, was she killed by Lucia or by some other means of self-destruction? You’ll really have to watch and work it out for yourself…

As Judy says, this is an unusual film for featuring three strong roles for women and for a storyline in which the leading man is the least sympathetic character. He is the the centre of the disruption in their lives and the reason for that is his own insecurity and faithlessness. The women, distracting though one of them is, are only looking for sincere connections. It's a woman's film in so many ways as Judy says, addressing the consequences of selfish masculinity on their impact on the lives of those he loves.

Carlos and Judy on the cliff edge

Aranda sets so many traps for the viewer, unfolding the narrative via the individual character’s testimony either within the story or through their words. He is in the great Spanish tradition of Luis Buñuel, who knew Breton and those surrealists, through to Almodóva, a storyteller creating a distinct world and using atmospheres to unsettle and intrigue. He’s also clearly a fine director of his company and the love quadrangle is exceptionally well played.

Capucine, a near physical impossibility, has such protean depth that you are convinced her character is capable of anything, which is grand as you don’t really know what she has done. Carlos Estrada plays broodily confused so well and has the confused masculinity of an Antonioni male, lost in the subtext of life while all the while expecting that success and dominance will enable him to have his way. Teresa Gimpera’s portrayal shows she has already reached a position of distrust, batting away his excuses even whilst giving him the benefit of doubt as she fearlessly seeks out the truth. She is the detective in the film to Estrada’s perpetrator/editor.

And… Judy's is quite the most complete performance you could expect, especially for a youngster, away from home in Spain, facing a challenging role in circumstances quite different from touring with pals. Capucine especially was very supportive and both the other actors are generous in how they played alongside her. There’s a real curiosity and centred unpredictability about Judy’s character, Esther Casino (running out of luck?) a febrility somehow mixed with an interior detachment. She reminds me of Ian McShane in The Ballad of Tam Lin, another overlooked gem I watched the day after this one – whose character has to be almost a cypher but also one with agency when the moments come. So, Esther is to the maximum degree and with the added element of only gradually being unveiled to us.

Half a century after it’s premier at the San Sebastian Film Festival, The Cadaver was equally well received in Manchester. Let’s hope that this is the beginning of a wider rediscovery and that, as I suggested to Judy, we can look forward to a screening at the BFI with her and Theresa being interviewed by Mark Gatiss. Let’s make it happen!!