The Juliette Society(81)

The way this story ends is more like that long tracking shot that leads to the end of Godard’s À Bout de Souffle where Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character, a petty criminal called Michel, is resigned to his fate, after his American girlfriend, who’s played by Jean Seberg, has just told him that she doesn’t love him and she’s informed on him to the cops. And she does it just to get his attention. She does it out of spite.

Being a gangster in a gangster movie, and aware of that fact and smarter than most, Michel already knows where all this is going to end up. And we know too.

Remember what I said?

Plot subservient to character.

So Michel, he’s been shot in the back and he’s stumbling down the street, stumbling towards oblivion. He makes it to the crossroads and then he falls. And this is really it, the end he envisioned for himself. But more banal, because he looks more like the victim of a minor traffic accident than a dangerous criminal shot down in a hail of gunfire by law enforcement.

The last words to come out of his mouth before he succumbs to his fatality: ‘Makes me want to puke’. That’s his sardonic parting shot to a world that never loved him and he never loved back. That’s his ‘Rosebud’ moment. But rather than leaving some grand revelation as he makes his final exit, his words are misheard, misconstrued, reinterpreted – we never find out which – as, ‘You make me want to puke’. A rejoinder, not to the world but to the woman he loved, who betrayed him – his Achilles heel, the femme fatale standing over him as he’s making a travesty of his big death scene.

But when this is relayed to Jean Seberg, her command of French which, up to this point in the movie, seems to have been estimable for a young American girl, suddenly fails her. She doesn’t understand the French word– dégueulasse – and has to ask what it means.

And that’s where the movie ends.

She’s left not only realizing the enormity of the events she’s set into motion through an act of casual self-regard, but also faced with the prospect of laboring under a misapprehension for the rest of her life.

That he died hating her guts.

If only all movies could end that way. If only all movies could end like life.

Unresolved.

Because, beginning from the day we are born… no, before that, beginning from the moment we are conceived, our lives are nothing if not a series of loose ends. Romantic, sexual, professional, familial, and probably a few others besides. And it takes every iota of our being to stop from getting tangled up in them.

Some people spend their lives obsessed by the loose ends, the what-ifs, could-have-beens and what-will-happens.

But not me.



Technically, at this precise moment, I’m a loose end. And DeVille knows that. He could get rid of me if he so desired. He has the power. He could just click his fingers and make me disappear. Like Anna. He could pay someone to do away with me, and cover it up the way I figure he did with Daisy and those other girls. And he’d never have to suffer the consequences, never have to pay the price. He’d carry on flashing that Colgate grin on TV and no one would be any the wiser.

But he won’t lay a finger on me, I’m pretty certain of that. And I’m not about to spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder, watching and waiting for that person to arrive. I’m not afraid. I’m sure DeVille’s assessed the risks and decided that I’m a loose end he can afford to live with.

Why do you think I’m so sure?

Well, you know what they say.

Knowledge is power.



DeVille made a promise to Jack. He said if they won the election, he’d give Jack a role in his administration. Jack has no reason to think that obligation won’t be met. I intend to see DeVille follows through. And I’m sure he will, because DeVille needs smart guys like Jack on his team to make him look good.

And who am I to deny Jack that opportunity? Who am I to put the brakes on his ambition?

Anyway, it’s not me DeVille has to fear.

It’s Jack.

How he’d react if he found out.

This is how these things work. You need to know that. No one has any incentive to go public. It’s not in anybody’s vested interest.

That’s the true nature of power. The occult nature of power.

It’s hidden. And it remains hidden.

So the Juliette Society, it just carries on.

Girls like Anna will continue to disappear. Or turn up dead.

And some poor sap like Bundy gets to take the rap. Because he’s disposable and doesn’t know enough about the bigger picture to take anybody else down with him. Ultimately, Bundy’s one link in the chain that can easily be replaced. There will always be girls who are willing to pander and guys who are eager to assist. It’s always been that way and it will always be that way.