by Rich Moreland, December 2016
SPOILER ALERT! This last installment of Justine discusses the film’s ending, but only partially. For the final resolution watch the film.
Justine is available through Vermeerworks in a download format or in DVD for those who want their own home library.
All photos are courtesy of Pachamama/Decadent Films.
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To Know the Unknowable
As Justine moves to its final outcome, Juliette takes center stage and tells her sister about their past.
Her narrative takes place at the pillory but it is interwoven with scenes of Juliette inspecting the dungeon where she amusingly caresses the restraining ropes and turns the wheel of torture.
In an empowered moment feminists will admire, Juliette holds a flogger and pulls it taut.
“With the figure and age we both had, we could not die of hunger,” Juliette recalls. “These speeches horrified Justine. She declared she preferred death.”
And what of Juliette, a criminal at fourteen? She never looked back.
“Prosperity . . . soiled with crime and horrors” brought her to this moment, she says.
The triumph of vice looks down upon the humiliation of virtue.
Jac Avila uses Juliette’s cynicism to confront Justine’s faith as the curtain begins to descend. It goes straight to the heart of the story, the pretense to know the unknowable.
Thirty-Nine
A redemptive moment in the bedroom prompts Justine’s promise to help Omphale escape (a vague reference to the novel when both were imprisoned in the monastery).
It’s all for naught, of course. Sade reveals that such promises are never carried out.
Justine is captured along with the other girls and the connection to the film’s opening scene is now complete.
Justine is sentenced, whipped, and pilloried.
The others receive their marks in kind . . .
. . . with Rosalie’s particularly graphic in a marvelously shot BDSM scene.
“Behold poor Rosalie. Born to be sacrificed. She will receive thirty-nine lashes of the whip,” Justine laments, addressing the camera once again.
Rodin is creating “his own version of the passion play with his daughter as the sacrifice,” she adds.
Thirty-nine is forty minus one, the number given Christ (forty was thought to bring death) and thirty-nine is three times the unlucky thirteen revisiting the number archetype we’ve already referenced.
Go back and check the opening scene, Justine passes out during her scourging following the thirty-ninth lash.
The Cross
After the march to the crucifixion site . . .
. . . the sacrificial victims are positioned on a tripod-like configuration (the number three again) that is actually a drying rack for animal hides typical of native cultures.
Rodin taunts Justine about the pain of the nails (in the novel he brands her as a whore) and looks proudly at his work for the benefit of the crowd.
Juliette approaches her sister.
“I will not share your pain . . . I will not take you down from your cross.”
In truth, Juliette cannot.
Justine is being punished for transgressions Sade, her literary creator, charged her with three centuries ago. In the novel when Rosalie is awaiting death at the hands of her father, Justine abandons her.
“I only thought of fleeing,” she says, though admitting that “leaving an innocent victim” to her fate was painful.
Grappling with her circumstances, Justine chooses self-preservation, preferring to “instantly set off on foot” to get away from the evil Rodin.
Her hand is in Rosalie’s murder as surely as if she were in that fatal room.
Now it’s pay back. Retribution.
Justine’s devotion to virtue has shortsighted her humanity allowing Jac Avila to brilliantly tie his film to Sade’s novel.
Our heroine will die with Rosalie . . . and with her devoted friend from the Sade’s monastery, Ophmale, whose skull Justine finds when she escapes the devilish monks.
Do You See Paradise?
As it happens, there is a final irony in this film that Sade would appreciate.
Justine’s death is a parody of Calvary . . . she is one of the criminals, an unwitting fate for the virtuous.
With unexpected compassion, Juliette promises Justine that perceived injustices (a satrical play on her name) will be punished demonstrating that virtue is often hidden within vice.
But the unknowable always lingers.
“You must answer me something,” Juliette says, gazing up at virtue’s disgrace. “Do you see Paradise? Do you see Hell waiting for you?”
She emphasizes “hell” with dripping scorn that mocks the blood on her sister’s body.
Justine utters, “I only see darkness . . . “
So then, we ask, what is the fate of virtue? Perhaps nothing more than the pretense to know the unknowable.
Final Thoughts
Both the Marquis de Sade and Jac Avila question the central conundrum about God that has forever perplexed the faithful.
Is He merciful or simply whimsical?
Sade the atheist dismisses the argument altogether as illustrated when Justine is imprisoned in the monastery’s collection of tortured female flesh.
To make way for new girls, current ones are regularly discharged (murdered) but without any particular reason. Age, attractiveness, attitude, nothing seems to determine who is chosen and why.
Jac Avila has a larger, moral take on the question. To understand how he handles this deeper issue, view this thought provoking film and watch for what is not included here.
Before we close, a word about the cast.
Amy Hesketh moves Justine’s character from Sade’s pathetic, clueless girl to an assertive woman who must deal with her fate. It is an admirable performance.
Cortney Willis is perfect for the haughty, arrogant, but sympathetic Juliette and Jac Avila artfully captures the indifferent Rodin, a scientist unmoved by the misery of those around him.
Mila Joya, a veteran of Pachamama/Decadent productions, and Beatriz Riveria have few lines but carry each scene with their interpretation of torture and suffering. Both women are exotic beauties who make luscious victims of Rodin’s evil ways.
Kudos to all.
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Congratulations to Amy and Jac for another superb and highly recommended film . . .
And to Amy, Mila, and Beatriz for braving chilly weather to bare it all for art!!
