Les Ballets écarlates (2007)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

With Les Ballets écarlates, agent provocateur director Jean-Pierre Mocky treads on more controversial ground than usual, so controversial in fact that it was banned by France's Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and never had a commercial release in cinemas (it was seen for the first time when it came out on DVD in 2007).  The film is inspired by the notorious 'Ballets roses' scandal which shook France in 1959 and concerned a paedophile ring of 23 people including some prominent public figures.  Mocky being Mocky, the film is intended to be a black comedy but it is so ineptly made and so drenched in bad taste that it isn't remotely funny.  The French government may have done Mocky a favour as Les Ballets écarlates is surely one of his worst films, not because of its sick idea of humour but because every aspect of the production reeks of wanton amateurishness.  The acting is horrendous throughout (either the entire film was under-rehearsed or the actors just couldn't be bothered) and Mocky's direction is equally undistinguished.  Mocky claimed that his intention in making the film was to attack 'institutionalised paedophilia', which he belived was still a real phenomenon in presentday France.  If only he had made the film with more care it could have been a chilling eye-opener, rather than one that lacks credibility in just about every department.

Film Synopsis

In an anonymous little town in France, a group of privileged individuals amuse themselves by organising debauched parties at which they indulge their paedophilic appetites with whatever children they can lure to their clandestine meetings.  One of these soirees doesn't go quite according to plan when a little boy named Eric manages to evade his captors before they can have their fun with him.  The boy takes refuge in the woods nearby, and it is here that he finds a suitably resilient protectress, Violaine.  It was two years ago that Violaine's own son went missing and, despite her best efforts, she has failed to shed any light on his disappearance.  Once she has gained the boy's confidence, she listens with interest to what Eric has to tell her.  The child's confused account chimes with Violaine's own suspicions that there is a paedophile ring operating in the town, abducting, abusing and possibly even murdering young children.  Galvanised by the fact that she has some concrete evidence to back up her theories, Violaine embarks on her campaign of revenge, determined to bring a fitting punishment to the perverts who have ruined her life and the lives of many others...