Joseph Losey's penultimate feature, the under-rated La Truite (1982), revisits the themes of his 1963 films, The Servant and The Damned. Personal relationships are viewed as power struggles and the bourgeoisie as an elegant, affluent moral and emotional wasteland. Centering on a struggling, suppressed woman hearkens back to Losey's 1973 adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House. The titular trout points two ways. It obviously refers to the men whom the coastal French trout-farmer Frederique (Isabelle Huppert) baits with sexual tease and chastely exploits. But the title is not Les truites but La Truite. That points to Frederique, who swims upstream, against the currents of class prejudice and male power, to transcend her unpromising roots. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.
Review of La truite
