She was a salacious icon of 20th century Paris – the brothel-keeper to the stars – so it’s perhaps rather apt that Netflix‘s new film about ‘Madame Claude’ is filled with racy scenes of sex parties, full frontal nudity and bondage.
As the reigning Queen of Sex in the French capital between the 1960s and 1970s, the Madame, real name Fernande Grudet, offered a secret and forbidden sexual world to a famous client list which reportedly included John F. Kennedy, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Pablo Picasso and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.
She dubbed her group of girls her ‘swans’, who boasted beautiful, elegant looks, classy charms and were often from fine French families.
But in the latest telling, released on Netflix on April 2, the glamour in which her story was often shrouded in is stripped away to show a darker reality – showing unerotic sex used as a weapon to capture secrets from high-profile men.
In just the first ten minutes of the film, viewers witness several racy scenes – including a girl stripping off in front of the Madame during an interview, before she is seen being intimate with a man for a ‘test’.
Elsewhere, the brothel owner (played by French actress Karole Rocher) helps teach a young woman how to properly clean her private parts, while later in the movie, a prostitute is seen being tied up.
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She was a salacious icon of 20th century Paris – the brothel-keeper to the stars – so it’s perhaps rather apt that Netflix’s new film about ‘Madame Claude’ (pictured right, in the film, and left, in real life) is filled with scenes of aggressive sex, full frontal nudity and bondage
As the reigning Queen of Sex in the French capital between the 1960s and 1970s, the Madame, real name Fernande Grudet, offered a secret and forbidden sexual world to a famous client list. Pictured, the Madame’s girls in the film
She dubbed her group of girls (pictured in the film) her ‘swans’, who boasted beautiful, elegant looks, classy charms and were often from fine French families
In her heyday, the mythology of Madame Claude was about more than sex, in which she herself claimed to have little interest.
Sex was a tool for the ruthless businesswoman: a route into high society and to freedom in a man’s world. ‘There are two things that people will always pay for: food and sex. I wasn’t any good at cooking,’ she famously said.
However, Grudet’s success did not last: she was twice convicted and imprisoned, first for tax evasion and then for a short-lived attempt to restart her prostitution racket in the 1990s.
She lived out her days in relative modesty in a small apartment on the south coast, estranged from her daughter, dying alone in 2015 at the age of 92.
Showing viewers just how ‘down to business’ the French film will get, Madame Claude opens with the brothel owner hosting a raucous party, filled with scantily clad women and professional men dressed in suits.
But in the latest telling, released on Netflix on April 2, the glamour in which her story was often shrouded in is stripped away to show a darker reality. Pictured, one of the Madame’s girls in the film during her racy scenes
In just the first ten minutes of the film, viewers witness several racy scenes (above) – including a girl stripping off in front of the Madame during an interview, before she is seen being intimate with a man for a ‘test’
She explains how she decided early on in her life that she would use sex as a weapon, building an entire empire by recruiting and training some 500 ‘Claudettes’ to provide expensive distraction for her clients, who would fork out a minimum of 10,000 franc a night (£8,423).
Within minutes, audiences at home see the coldly efficient businesswoman interview a new recruit, Sidonie (played by Garance Marillier), and telling her to strip.
Sidonie, who is then tested by being asked to sleep with a friend of the Madame’s before being placed with any clients, will later prove herself worthy of being Grudet’s right-hand woman.
Alongside cold and clinical sex scenes, viewers witness the Madame’s ruthlessness, finding she has little concern for her girls beyond external damages.
Behind the scenes were ties to organised crime, a life of emotional misery and a near-pathological lack of scruples: Madame Claude, it emphasises, always made sure to get her 30 percent, even when the girls returned bruised and bloodied from a meet-up gone wrong.
As such, when her girls return from an encounter with disturbing signs of assault, she has one question: ‘Did they pay you?’, before adding: ‘Your white skin bruises easily, but it’ll be gone in two days.’
‘There is the image of Madame Claude: of Paris, beautiful dresses and big hotels, power… What interested me was what was happening behind the scenes,’ director Sylvie Verheyde said.
‘Madame Claude built her mythology. She was a great liar, a fraud who said she wanted to “beautify vice”, which meant brushing all the ugliness under the carpet.
‘For my own mother, who came from a working class background and moved to Paris, Madame Claude was a role-model,’ said Verheyde.
‘I found that delusional, but actually, for a woman of her generation and her class, there were few successful female role-models with which to identify,’ she said.
The director’s new film stands in deliberate contrast to previous tellings, especially the erotic film of the same name from 1977, by ‘Emmanuelle’ director Just Jaeckin.
Elsewhere, the brothel owner (played by French actress Karole Rocher, pictured) helps teach a young woman how to properly clean her private parts, while later in the movie, a prostitute is seen being tied up
In her heyday, the mythology of Madame Claude (pictured left, in the film) was about more than sex, in which she herself claimed to have little interest
‘I think our era is much more ready for the reality and to put an end to the stereotypes of those years,’ said Verheyde, who explained that the sex in her film is deliberately unerotic: ‘This isn’t love, they are working!’
The Madame’s part is played by Karole Rocher, known for hard-edged roles, particularly as a detective in hit French crime drama ‘Braquo’.
‘Female gangster roles are still pretty rare,’ said Rocher. ‘It’s interesting to play, for once, a female character that has this hate, this rage that we normally associate with men. A role that is so bitter, so unsympathetic, without being sexualised – I love it.’
As for Netflix, it will hope the film can build on the recent spell of success by shows such as ‘Call My Agent’, ‘The Bureau’ and ‘Baron Noir’ that have brought inevitable claims of a golden age for French TV.
The streaming platform had a major hit earlier this year with ‘Lupin’, the first time a French-language show had topped its chart worldwide.
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