Most of the life of Fernande Grudet it still remains a mystery today, and she would be glad of it. Sylvie Verheyde’s Netflix film, which finished at the top of the “most viewed” list in a few days, is just the latest attempt to reinterpret the figure of Madame Claude: the most famous mistress in France, or of the Republic as she likes to repeat.
Madame Claude really was the owner of the most famous high-class brothels in Paris, at the turn of the ’60s and’ 70s, as well as the one who was able to have in hand stars (one above all, it is quoted, Marlon Brando) and politicians fond of her “girls”.
The biopic retraces his exploits, without revealing too much of the true protagonist of the story. To find out more about her, one would have to go back to one quiet street called Rue de Maignon, and then in a modest 12-room hotel on Rue de Boulanville. When Paris was full of “powerful men with wishes to satisfy and money to make those wishes come true.” In that case, there was only one person to call: Madame Claude. Whether it was JFK, Charles de Gaulle or the Iranian Shah.
Netflix’s first original French film, written and directed by Sylvie Verheyde (the same as Stella e Confessions of a Child of the Century), and performed by Karole Rocher, impeccably reconstructs the small hotels of the 1960s, the cafes where you can meet the powerful on duty, the apartments of France that matters. The “girls of Claude” were famous for their beauty and refinement, for the ability to immerse themselves in the most elite circles without anyone suspecting why they were there. Madame Claude’s specialty was to take unknown girls – her favorite would “discover” her outside a pharmacy on the Champs-Élysées while selling newspapers – and transform them, through her rigorous “tutelage”, into “professionals you would have liked to marry” . “I played the role of the pygmalion a bit», Let a know Vanity Fair in 1985, while a former customer in the same article defines his business as “the most beautiful sexual operation ever conducted in the history of mankind ». In a passage of the film, however, she herself observes: “Some even doubt that I exist ».
In a memoir from 1994, Fernande Grudet wrote that she was born into a noble family in the Loire in 1923, went to school with the nuns and was then deported to a concentration camp by the Nazis for being in favor of the French resistance. But a 2010 French documentary about his life questions all these claims, dismantling them one after the other. Still mystery. What is certain is that she would arrive in Paris years later. “There are two things that people will always pay for: food and sex … and I’ve never been good at cooking “, one of his most famous phrases.
The interview to become one of his girls, as the film tells, Madame Claude he conducted it with skill and precision. The meeting it was notoriously exhausting: his girls had to hold their own in rooms full of politicians and financiers, so he asked them about the wife of Louis XIV and the formula of water. Then he examined the contents of their bag, and told them to undress. In a scene from the Netflix biopic he even explains how to wash the private parts. His “reward” for each service (10-15 thousand francs per night or 1,500-2,300 euros) is 30 percent.
The client list included (presumably) kings, presidents, artists, ministers, ambassadors, industrialists. She herself a Vanity Fair revealed that Kennedy asked “like Jackie, but hot,” while Chagall then gave the girls a portrait of him. “Hurry up, Marlon Brando will be here in 15 minutes!” yells at the girls in a scene from the movie. But things, at times, could also end badly. Like when a girl fired a pistol at her, leaving the bullet trapped in one of her bulky shoulder pads. And then there’s the involvement with the Secret Service, his favorite part, with the girls becoming CIA informants.
The late 1970s and the attempt by the French government (Giscard D’Estaing arrived) to prosecute her for tax evasion, they will then take her to Los Angeles, under a false name. Again at the center of the news, but no longer what it used to be. Finally, the return to France, four months in prison (but like a castle) and the last few years in Nice, in a two-room apartment.
“I was interested in his being half heroin and half monster. Like the smuggler Pablo Escobar and the terrorist Carlos. Fascinating and repulsive at the same time. I wanted to deconstruct the myth, ”says the director. Sex and power that the film only suggests, but in reality it does not explain at all. You don’t understand who she really was Madame Claude and why it was so powerful. But, as we said, it is probably the version she wanted to give.
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
