When Pain Turned to Poetry: The Making of La Marge
Some films entertain, and then there are films that leave a wound; La Marge is a part of the latter category. Walerian Borowczyk’s La Marge (or The Margin) came out in 1976. It is a tragic romance revolving around a grieving husband and a Parisian prostitute, but it also and mainly focuses on psychological descents that mirrored the turmoil of the people that brought it to life. Soft, sensual imagery captured the stories of exhaustion, isolation, and quiet defiance. It remains a fascinating blend of artistic ambition and fragility of the human spirit.
The film starred 1970s sensual cinema icons Sylvia Kristel and Joe Dallesandro, both of whom brought their own scars to the set which de Mandiargues’s story was to take. What unfolded was a seamless integration of Borowczyk’s vision, Kristel and Dallesandro’s erotic drama, and the unsettling clash of passion and suffering.
Desire Cloaked in Loss
Each portion of this film has a constellation in the story’s timing. Sigismond (Joe Dallesandro), a middle-aged businessman, travels to Paris, only to discover, through a telegram, that his wife has died. Instead of returning home to process his grief, he sinks into an affair with Diana (Sylvia Kristel), an upscale hooker who, paradoxically, offers, not lust, but a certain stillness that provides a temporary refuge from loss.
Each segment of this film feels melancholic. The camera focuses on faces attempting to evoke a particular emotion. They linger on the mirrors and bodies. They do not do this to arouse. They do it to evoke mourning. The pleasure of the still frame is the pain that in the eroticism is trying to mask itself. This is why La Marge is so disarming. It is not a story about sex, but the ways in which we seek to revive the dead, the longing to feel the pulse of life when it is the absence of love that has consumed you wholly.
Walerian Borowczyk and the Shadow of Control
Walerian Borowczyk, who directed this film, had a reputation for his eccentricity and obsession with precision. This Polish artist, who had to leave his home due to censorship, built a reputation in France for surreal eroticism and visual poetry. However, the mid-70s brought struggles to him.
The fast-changing industry meant sex films were no longer artistic experiments but mainstream commodities. Having been influenced by more explicit films, the producers’ vision conflicted with Borowczyk’s. The desire to maintain artistic subtlety proved friction during production.
Borowczyk’s attention to detail became exhaustive and at times, emotionally depleting for actors. Sylvia Kristel’s remark that he had, “a painter’s eye and a monk’s patience — and sometimes, a tyrant’s silence,” was a testament to his dedication.
Tension emerged between the director and the financiers when repeated retakes and slow schedules over-budgeted the shoot. La Marge became a breakdown for Borowczyk; proof that eroticism could be art and not exploitation. It was a creative sanctuary and a source of personal breakdown for him. It was more than just proof that eroticism could be art and not exploitation.
Sylvia Kristel: Fame, Fatigue, and a Woman Trying to be Seen
At the age of 22, Kristel became an international sensation after starring in the film Emmanuelle (1974). To the world, Kristel epitomized effortless sensuality. Behind the scenes of the film Kristel was crumbling. La Marge offered something to Kristel which Emmanuelle never did: emotional depth. Kristel’s character, Diana, was not a fantasy. She was a woman, like Diana, who sold illusions to the world while drowning in her loneliness.
Kristel later confessed to strongly identifying with Diana’s weariness. Fame had made Kristel an object of desire, but not of emotional comprehension. In between exhausting press tours and painful personal heartbreak, Kristel often arrived to set which was the last place she wanted to be. In the end, she found solace in the quiet direction of Borowczyk.
One scene that stands out is of Diana silently observing Sigismond asleep. Her gaze is filled with pity and tenderness. This scene was shot after Kristel had broken down off camera. Borowczyk was uncharacteristically unrelenting, not cutting the scene, sensing that her real exhaustion was more powerful than acting. “He didn’t want performance,” she reflected a few years after the incident. “He wanted truth — even if it hurt.”
Joe Dallesandro was already a legend in underground cinema, known as Andy Warhol’s muse and the raw face of 1970s counterculture. But by the time La Marge was filmed, Dallesandro’s career was in flux. He had left the Warhol circle, struggling to find footing in European art films.
Sigismond was a mirror of Joe himself — lost, weary, and trying to escape the ghosts of his past. His financial struggles, hidden from most of the crew, were evident to the rest of the crew. His haunted presence, struggling with the role of Sigismond, lent the role the desired authenticity.
Borowczyk didn’t direct Dallesandro. He asked for silence — long takes in which the actor could simply “exist.” The outcome was spellbinding. Sigismond’s torpid strolls across the Parisian streets reflected Dallesandro’s real-life bewilderment, a man in a confounding state between art and life.
The Paris That Swallowed Them.
The majority of shooting was done in real Parisian apartments and small hotels, often lit by the dim, cold winter sun. The sparse set design and use of natural light contributed to realism, but they also made for some uncomfortable working conditions. Crew members endured broken heaters, behind schedule tempers, and the tension that comes with working under unforgiving circumstances.
Even so, something about that collective discomfort enhanced the mood of the film. Kristel and Dallesandro, though not close off-screen, shared a silent, unshakeable respect. Their scenes together exuded a tenderness not from chemistry but from mutual weariness — two people performing a deep, agonizing pain while quietly living it.
A Film Born of Struggle, Remembered for Its Honesty
When La Marge was finally released, the reactions were mixed. Some reviewers called the film slow, even self-indulgent, while for others, it was among Borowczyk’s most emotionally sincere pieces. While the film was a commercial failure, it was the haunting close-up images which the film incorporated which stayed with the audience. Over the years, cinephiles began to appreciate it for what it was, a hidden gem, a rare glimpse of sorrow in a piece of erotic cinema, rather than the escapist fantasy most offered.
For the cast and crew, however, La Marge left deeper wounds. Borowczyk was frustrated with how La Marge was received and he retreated even further into isolation. Kristel’s performance, one of her finest, was also her biggest overshadowed as her sex-symbol label overshadowed it. Having Dallesandro drift toward other European projects still left him with a feeling of chasing belonging.
Nevertheless, perhaps that is what makes La Marge so timeless – it was born out of imperfection, fatigue, and unfulfilled desire. These emotions, which weighed down the film’s creators, also became the lifeblood of the film’s story. Reality and film bled into one and became indistinguishable, a mirror of life itself, framed in soft sorrow.