(Photos courtesy of Koch Lorber)
The Alain Delon renaissance continues with Joy House (Koch Lorber), an agreeable and cool piece of stylish cinema
from 1964. Delon plays an attractive but petty criminal on the run from the underground. While on the Riviera, he manages to find sanctuary in a lodge house with a rather glamorous staff led by Melinda (Jane Fonda) and Barbara (Lola Albright). The two women move him to a Gothic mansion owned by Albright, a wealthy woman with a Florence Nightingale complex. Fonda's character, her cousin, sets her sites on Delon's character and doggedly attempts to entice him into bed. Meanwhile, Delon has other problems as someone is attempting to poison him; and his homicidal ex-partners are making headway with regard to his whereabouts.
Joy House is sort of Delon-lite, a lightweight version of some of the gangster films he was yet to partake in and become an icon of European cinema (Le Samouri was four years away). Jane Fonda was about to peak as an international sex symbol and interestingly enough she dubbed her French dialogue during post-production of this particular film (her first European production). Director Rene Clement's work here is not in the same class as his masterpiece Purple Noon four years earlier (also a star making vehicle for Delon). But the film should be of interest to the Delon completest and at a brisk 95 minutes (the European cut is a few minutes longer) it is a pleasurable late summer highbrow thriller.
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