Joy House (1964)

A Disappointing Continuation

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Rene Clement again directs Alain Delon, this time in Joy House, a 1964 film that covers a lot of genres - thriller, noir, suspense, and romance.Delon plays a criminal on the run. He enters a place for homeless people on the Riviera and two women serve soup there, played by Lola Albright and Jane Fonda.The women bring him to Albright's mansion -- she's a wealthy woman who works at saving people. Fonda is her cousin and falls hard for Delon and tries to seduce him. Meanwhile, someone is trying to poison him and his former gang knows where he is and is out to get him. Interesting film, with the highly underrated Lola Albright giving an excellent performance as a beautiful but tough woman. Fonda, who says her French wasn't very good, is excellent as well as gorgeous. Of course Delon was better looking than both of them, and while his character is attracted to the Albright character, I don't know why he wasn't attracted to Jane.The end of this film is wild and really brilliant.The film explores the idea of prison. Sometimes even without bars, you can be a prisoner.

There's a good thriller hidden somewhere in all the messiness of "Joy House," but the film is ruined by the truly terrible performance of Alain Delon (his first in English, perhaps - which would partly explain it) and the mediocre script, which might have worked better in French since some of the English dialogue is very awkward. Delon's character is so obnoxious and makes so little sense that impossible to care about him one way or the other. Jane Fonda is fun as a young vixen who's more unbalanced that you might think, and Lola Albright does well under the circumstances as a mysterious, manipulative widow. Rene Clement's direction is frantic and sometimes incoherent, as is the plot. We never really do find out who Fonda's character really is, and her relationship to the widow.I'm not a huge fan of "Plein Soleil" ("Purple Noon"), but that is a masterwork next to this. Clement's talent as a director had clearly dissipated by the early 60's. His subsequent films to "Joy House" are even less interesting.

I have read someone talking about rené clair - hahaha ! The director is rené clement and he's made lot of classic, lot of wonderful movies as "jeux interdits", "la bataille du rail", "plein soleil" and this one, in the middle of the french cinema golden age. People talking about rené clair instead of rene clement could not be reliable at all - or john huston and john ford are the same person. Brainless often speaks like brainfull... So, here we go, Delon needs to hide and these 2 women accept to hide him from police in their beautiful house - but, what u see is not what is real, like Hitchcock used to do to fool his audience, and soon you'll learn, as the poor delon learns, that these charming ladies are worse than the police... Women here are pretty modern, and men are toys for them, toys u can tear apart, toys u can leave in a room til u need them, men slaves to their desire and will. And what was at the beginning just a hide and seek with the police become a nightmare and a jail for a man totally under control of 2 women - like women had been toys for men for centuries... And this is the modern part of the movie, the raising power of women in the world and the unability for men to take back the control of their lives. Delon is handsome as the devil, but a devil ruined by women, with no escape, and what was only a runaway movie becomes a nightmare movie - watch it til the end ! Without hesitation --> 9/10

This movie is wonderful! Very suspenseful, sexy and well acted. Jane Fonda is great and Alain Delon just freezes the screen with his coolness. Action packed and full of twists and turns. Get this movie if you can! You will not guess the ending. If you like cool cars, great B&W shots, 60's seduction and French movies in general this is the one for you. Everything that was missing from THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY is in this forgotten gem.