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California (1996)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

In 1996, in between filming “The Addiction” and “The Funeral”, Abel Ferrara teamed up with French pop sensation Mylène Farmer to do a video for her song “California”.
And although it’s not the epic we may have hoped for (Farmer is famous for her big budget, grand, cinematic videos) it still has many of Ferrara’s hallmarks.

Basically the ‘plot’ is the parallel existence of two women (both played by Farmer), one is the well kept (and totally controlled) girlfriend of a rich and successful man (possibly a celebrity) and the other is a street walker at the mercy (and whim) of her pimp. The rich man and the pimp also look alike (both played by Giancarlo Esposito, “The Usual Suspects”).
On her way to a lavish party the girlfriend spots the hooker being hit by her pimp and notices how alike they are (something of course with a greater meaning) but she is stopped from intervening by her boyfriend.

At the party the press click their cameras and the hangers on bow and scrape as champagne is poured, but the girlfriend can’t get the hooker out of her mind and, after striping her expensive clothes down to an open jacket and short skirt she leaves the party and walks the streets to find her double.
She does find her, but she is now a corpse being taken away by the Paramedics.

The girlfriend then approaches the pimp who takes her to his room. Here, while seducing him, the girlfriend stabs him to death with her hair pin…avenging the hooker…

The above synopsis is of course but a skeleton to hang the flesh of the meaning and metaphor of the story on.
Ferrara shows both Mylène Farmer incarnations being told by their men (visually, there is no dialogue here) what to wear and how to act. The rich girlfriend is just as much an accessory to the rich man’s image as the hooker is just a tool to make money for the pimp. Both are controlled, both are in subservience.

That the pimp and the boyfriend look alike can be taken literally or not. We do see him alone with the hooker before the girlfriend sees him, but perhaps he only looks like her boyfriend because she sees in the pimp what she has tried to ignore in her boyfriend?
Does the hooker really look like her? This is perhaps more solidified in truth as the girlfriend ignores the other hookers on the sidewalk, so something must indeed catch her eye about the other woman.

What’s really interesting here is the motives of the girlfriend. Does she go out to meet the hooker (dressed as she is) to join her? To leave behind the shadowed prostitution of herself as the decorative plaything of her boyfriend for the more honest prostitution on the streets?
Does she go to save the girl? Not only from the pimp following the assault she witnessed but from the life itself?
As she arrives too late we can never know, but even this death brings in some interesting motives for the girlfriend’s revenge.
Does she kill the pimp in simple revenge for the murder of her double? Is it revenge for a fellow used and abused woman? Or is it an act more selfish, in that her killing of the pimp is a stand in for what she feared to do (maybe not via death, but by leaving him) to her own boyfriend.
And of course the big question left unanswered is what will she do now? Will she go back to her life or leave it behind now she has found the strength?

Farmer herself looks amazing (as always) and sings a haunting song beautifully. It’s certainly one of her finest works and she not only sings the lyrics with great emotion but also (as she does in all her videos) acts her dual roles wonderfully.
She’s huge in France and the rest of Europe and if there was any justice she’d have far more than the cult following she has in the UK and America (mostly thanks to her early, epic, nudity filled videos like the classic “Libertine”).

The fateful drive through the city once again shows how great Ferrara is at catching the neon jungle atmosphere of a big city (with some stunning cinematography by his semi-regular cameraman Ken Kelsch, “The Bad Lt.”, “Driller Killer”) but his visual style never overwhelms the message of the video.
For fans of his work there are a few visual similarities in this to Ferrara’s movies.
The arrival at the party is shot like a deleted scene from “King of New York” as the rich guy arrives into a sea of interest and uproars, much like how celebrity criminal Frank White arrives at the restaurant after coming out of prison.
The art deco apartment of the rich man also reminds us of the lush, warmly lit pad of the drug dealer shot in the phone box from “King of New York”.
And on a more basic level the avenging woman brings back memories of “Ms.45” of course.

So even with only 5 minutes to work with (despite having a director like Ferrara on board, this happens to be one of Farmer’s shorter videos) Abel manages to put his stamp on “California” and the video storyline manages to open up many interesting ideas as the excellent song accompanies the striking visuals.