The war between progress and tradition is the conflict of our age--if we survive our current period of history, people will look back at today as the center of an era defined by a profound and violent difference between left- and right-wing politics. I suspect that by the time this is all over--if it ever ends--we will be left with a world less fundamentally grounded on the old 18th Century idea of liberalism vs. conservatism than what we're used to. At the very least, the definitions of those institutions will be dramatically shifted, or at least, shifted to different sets of issues. And, while this could be construed as wishful thinking, I suspect that conservatism, at least in the United States, is ultimately on its last legs; the recent indications of intensifying conservatism in the form of the increasing activity of white supremacist movements and the like are symbols of conservative inability to reconcile the general right-wing identity with the way the country is going, even in this post-Obama world of ours, which will lead to a burnout followed by a generally progressive (i.e. not necessarily leftist) attitude amongst the populace-at-large. That's my interpretation, at least.
But let's not talk about the present state of ideological conflict (seriously; keep it out of the comments). Today we're talking about the 1950s. Pierre Foucaud's The Fast Set is a lot of things, including a romance and a striptease documentary; but it's also about the difference between the old ways and the new, the libertine and the reserved. Only the French could produce a sexploitation movie that so convincingly touches on real issues.
Sophie is the daughter of a wealthy Lyons family, who disapprove of her boyfriend Jack and her desire to follow him and her dreams of being an artist to Paris. Thanks to her cool mom, Sophie is able to join Jack in Paris, but the fast life she discovers is nothing she's prepared for. Sure, Sophie is used to rebellion back in Lyons, but she wasn't prepared for the world of stripteases, nude modeling, and prototypical free love. She has to dodge the attentions of her jealous rival Rita, and in her quest to win Jack over entirely, she becomes a bohemian. Eventually, the stage calls to her. Out in the parlor, the audience awaits their striptease...
First of all, it needs to be said that this movie is, for nearly all modern audiences, going to seem extremely mild. I don't know how much of that is deliberate, but let's just say those of us who have seen Human Centipede 2 are going to find Sophie's dad's offense at her leaving dinner without being properly excused a little silly. In the beginning, I do believe that Sophie's actions are meant to be seen as rebellious (they also include the abominable crime of eating sweets instead of dinner), but they are not quite on par with taking off your clothes all sexy-like for a crowd of strangers. She is meant to start out naive so she can make her lovely quest towards true libertinism. I do always enjoy stories like this, of young people finding their inner freedoms, even as I get older and more cynical. Movies like this, as milquetoasty as they can be, help me feel less crusty around the edges.
The conservatism, on the other hand, does feel real. Even today we have to contend with old ladies who think that wearing shorts is slutty; and I think all of us have heard at least one middle-aged dude who is refuted on a point for just this once, whose immediate response is to bluster, "I GUESS I'M JUST ALWAYS WRONG THEN." The times, they are a-not changing. I would have laughed if Sophie's dad had a t-shirt that said, "J'ai accheté cet fusil à pompe parce qu'un jour un garçon va sortir avec ma fille"--and not because those shirts are ever anything but fucking sexist and dumb. At least this movie is...generally not racist? Some of the striptease acts are likely to offend people (there's one involving a hashish-smoking sheikh called "Impressions of the Orient"), but it's still usually pretty mild.
The stripteases themselves are presented, as I alluded before, in a pseudo-documentary fashion. This movie illustrates superbly the transition between old-world burlesque and the exotic dancing of today. Initially, we see that these acts are tamer than what we're accustomed, with one of them never even showing the nipples of the woman in question. Then, several of the acts we see actually follow vague storylines. By the time that we see our strippers are a pair of male Laurel & Hardy impressionists, whose deliberately unerotic striptease is received humorously by the audience, we know that we're looking at an animal which is today extinct in the wild. If you put two ugly guys out on stage at a strip club and had them start taking their clothes off, they'd be lynched. Now, I don't say that to disparage the modern exotic dancing industry--just perhaps their audience. It's just interesting to see such an "artsy" take on what we unjustly view today as a lowdown sort of thing, and more interesting to think about how our society may have gotten that way. Have we become more liberal with our sexuality, in our treatment of women, or less? Has the art gone away on its own, or did we push it out? And what can we do for the stripping and exotic dancing which does still hold the artistic spirit?
The movie does get some details of realism wrong. For example, no one is ever turned on during a nude modeling. Not the models, not the artists. I haven't even participated in a nude modeling art session (you can tell because I don't know what they're properly called), and I know that they're uncomfortable as fuck. Not because of the nudity, but because art is pain, and also, studios are cold. When one of the artists remarked on the attractiveness of his nude model I was completely taken out of the movie. ZERO STARS.
To return to the themes in a serious sense for a moment: this movie is about the Big City turning a privileged girl into a rebel, but it's also about a country girl taming a city man. Tradition gets a little victory at the end, which may have been a scene tacked on for the sake of censors and pearl-clutchers. It's interesting to see the movie try to be fair, in a way which is pretty harmless at that. The whole movie is pretty harmless, again due to the oft-stated mildness.
On the trash side, we get such wonders as the tiniest car ever (seriously, EVER) and an extremely casual delivery of the line, "She could kill herself!" There's also an awesome jazz soundtrack which will probably get stuck in your head. If you like seeing interesting '50s politics, and you also like seeing people take their clothes off comedically, you need to speed up--so you can catch up with The Fast Set.
...also this movie probably features the last-ever use of the word "Set" in that context, at least until The Rebel Set came along in 1959. And speaking of The Rebel Set, we'll get into mid-century MST3K fodder again in just a little bit.
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