Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse

Of the many movies on my very long yet-to-see list, I was able to shorten it by one on an evening that, as I would soon learn after a quick internet search, was only several weeks after its director, Juan Luis Buñuel, had passed away. While he will not enter into the horror pantheon with the likes of Tobe Hooper or George Romero, who sadly both passed away in 2017, Juan Louis Buñuel nevertheless made a meaningful contribution to, and arguably left an influence on, horror film in the form of Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse (1973), aka At the Meeting with Joyous Death, or Expulsion of the Devil in the US. The film is certainly more than a mere footnote in Gérard Depardieu’s acting career or simply interesting for no better reason than having been made by the son of the great Luis Buñuel. In fact, I think Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse was recycled into countless horror movies that followed.

It’s a safe assumption that Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse was inspired by Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House (adapted in 1963 to film into the superb, The Haunting), especially when considering the connection between the story’s main character Eleanor with the house, as compared to Sophie’s relationship to the house in Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse. On the other hand, compared to Richard Matheson’s shameless 1971 pastiche, Hell House, which was quickly made into the very fun film The Legend of Hell House in 1973, it's clear Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse is far from derivative. The ill-fated mission in Hell House to find evidence of life after death leads to an ensconced mystery that once solved, rids the house of its ghostly presence. This classic cliché isn't the concern of Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse.

Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse has been called a proto-Poltergeist by a few film bloggers. But Poltergeist is a specifically American white middle class movie that deals with a nuclear family, extradimensional kidnaping, desecrated burial grounds and, what we discover in the sequel, all happens to be linked to a doomsday cult born during the settling of the American frontier. And when comparing Carol Anne to Sophie, Carol Anne is a young innocent child targeted by a maleficent poltergeist out to destroy the Freeling family.

Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse explores a very different path, with Sophie’s pubescence awakening a supernatural power that is intrinsically linked to the house itself. An interim of madness and murder ensue as Sophie rendezvous with a house harboring a destructive and consuming force, where telekinetic tantrums and seductive instincts are unleashed. Sophie's budding nature triggers the manifestation of a simulacrum, a dark spectral reflection of Sophie motivated by possessiveness and envy. Calm is eventually restored after Sophie's father impotently threatens to burn the house down. Sophie surrenders to the house, appearing to merge with it, where her being fades into the chateau, becoming the peaceful untouched ivy-covered isolated refuge Sophie had always wanted, restoring serenity and innocence. One might easily infer that Juan Luis Buñuel is telling a story about his own fears of female puberty, or worse his infatuation with young girls.

While exploring such fears, Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse employs the full gamut of basic tropes used in one haunted house iteration after another, although well before they actually had become so deeply cliché. For instance, a family moves into a countryside house to get away from the city, the father is financially unstable, the mother is the breadwinner, one is an artist, one is a writer, they bicker about money, the tensions effect the kids, and the kids begin to notice weird things before mom and dad do. Family friends visit, strange things happen, suspicions of alcohol abuse and drunken violence are used to explain said strange things. Once it’s clear something supernatural is afoot, an outside crew is invited in to document the phenomena, only to have everyone get swept up into the family’s plight. Dishes break, chandeliers shake, heavy footsteps stomp across the wood floors. A ball ominously rolls down the stairwell on its own. Ear bleeding sonic eruptions terrorize everyone inside. Illusions of good people doing terrible things beguile everyone into states of mistrust. Cars are inexplicably disabled. A weak-minded assistant goes nuts from the pressure, gets seriously injured, tries to escape, murdering and thieving as he flees. Floorboards crack away exposing a bottomless well that a poor soul falls into.

When this modest French film was made, these weren't considered the well worn tropes they are today, and it's interesting how all of them are treated so casually instead of being used as the major devices horror movie scares hinge on. Of course, Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse is no genre film. At most, it falls into the very broad territory of fantastique, and so in a sense, isn't much of a horror movie in the first place. Which is all the more reason it deserves significant reevaluation.

By no means am I claiming that Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse invented all these movie tropes. I just think Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse hasn’t gotten its due, and should, partly because of its rather subtle and sophisticated story, but also because, while it was never fully imitated, it has had many of its elements used without giving the film any recognition for being one of the early examples of a unique and imaginative haunted house story within horror film lineage.

RIP Juan Luis Buñuel