Yannick Bellon: The Happy Pessimist - The Cheat

Part Two

Yannick Bellon is one of the greatest French filmmakers of the twentieth century, yet owing to her fierce independence and singular voice, remains underknown in comparison to her contemporaries. With this retrospective, the most comprehensive ever staged in the United States, Bellon’s exposure and reputation should deservedly begin to be appreciated as the major artist she is.

Over a sixty-year career, Bellon collaborated with stars like Bulle Ogier, Marlène Jobert, and amateur actors, creating both shorts and features, narratives and documentaries, and work for television and cinema. Each work is as extraordinary as the last.

Through her production company, Les Films de l’Équinoxe, Bellon wrote, directed and produced her own work, tackling subjects with predominantly female characters that few, if any, fellow filmmakers attempted to present. Bellon worked outside any dominant movements such as the New Wave, and remained uncompromising in her vision and true to her art.

The Cheat

La Triche

A crime film with all the classic ingredients of pacing and tension, murder and blackmail, but it is in fact a trompe-l’œil. In Bordeaux, a murder investigation draws us into another inquiry, more secret, of the love affair between a young musician and a bisexual police inspector “beyond all suspicion,” revealing a double identity.

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