A lot of nudity follows, including full-frontal and full-back nudity. Anyhow, the censors would cut out at least a couple more minutes of this film.
A major cat-fight follows, complete with blood.The Farmer character and the lover escape on a horse. Somehow, the jealous lover gets a whole gang of armed thugs to kill the guy that the Mylene Farmer character had sex with earlier and her and get out faster than the guy's horse can ride to ambush the lovers.
The thugs end up killing both of them.
Lyrics vs. Video: The particular translation that I found makes a little sense but not a whole lot. There is a reference to "between my dunes are lying my misfortunes"; in other words, between her breasts is her heart, and her heart is the source of her misfortunes. The video, in this case, makes a lot of sense as there is a clear story told of a girl who is a libertine, has sex with a man who has a jealous lover, and the lover gets her revenge.
Pourvu qu'elles soient douces ("So Long As They Are Sweet")
This is basically a continuation of the last video. It turns out she's alive. She has been found by British troops going to the aid of Prussia which is under attack by France and others.The video is being narrated into English and is being given French subtitles.
The girl spoke French which tipped off the English to the fact that they were quite lost and were in France rather than Prussia.
The actual singing has started. In the storyline, the British soldier had gone into the tent where she was asleep and lifted up her blanket to look at her naked rear end. The young boy came in and disturbed him and he was giving the young soldier a whipping when Farmer's female character confronted him.
He wants her to whip the boy but she takes the whip to him instead, so he confronts her in her tent shortly after.
She whaps him with a bottle, steals a horse and escapes, only to be followed by him on a horse. The woman who led the effort to kill her apparently has given the location of the English to the French and received a reward.
The English captain (?) has found her and taken her back to his tent where he is having sex with her. The jealous lover, meanwhile, has a bunch of her girls with her and they are busy getting the British soldiers drunk and having sex with them, presumably so the French can take them with no problem. Again, there's a lot of nudity and partial nudity.
The French open fire with their cannons, not caring that they're killing the women as well as the English soldiers. While that is going on the jealous lover kills the English captain.
Another catfight insues, but this time the Farmer character wins the fight by using a bayonet on the jealous lover.
She takes a horse ("the black horse of death") and saves the drummer boy from being killed by the French.
Lyrics vs. Video: I read two different translations of the lyrics to this song. Having read both, I can't say whether or not it has anything to do with the video as the translated lyrics don't make any sense except for one reference to some guy liking her breasts, and the rather plain "My little buttocks/Do not cease to inspire you..."
Tristana
This seems to be taking place in Russia near the time of the Russian revolution. The old guy with a beard I think is supposed to be Rasputin. Various shots of Lenin and Karl Marx are also seen later in the video.
The same actress from the last two videos.
A guy has been chasing her through a forest.
Some guys killed the man she was with. She ran and fell and woke up in this place.
She seems to now be staying with seven dwarves.
The evil something-or-other appears.
A stranger appears. Meanwhile, a bunch of wolves are chasing the evil woman. The stranger and the dwarves later take her out, I presume to bury her.
Lyrics vs. video: Again, the lyrics (in both translations I found) are rather vague except for the fact that Tristana dies, which the Farmer character does in the video.
One other thing on this particular clip. The song itself sort of gets lost in the clip; her voice is good as always, but sometimes a video can actually distract from the song; the song, instead of being the centerpiece, becomes only background music for the video.
Sans Contrefacon ("With No Forgery")
Some ventriloquist is thrown out of an inn or something like that.
He comes upon a run-down circus.
The woman runs away with the guy's dummy and he follows, finding the woman on the beach with an actual flesh-and-blood woman instead of the dummy.
She runs away from him but he catches her.
She returns to the form of a dummy as the circus moves away.
Lyrics vs. video: I have two different translations of the lyrics that I found and neither one even comes close to actually making sense. The person keeps claiming that they are a boy. That's about all the sense I can make out of it. As far as what the video shows, the video is sort of like a mini-episode of the Twilight Zone.
The song is more prominent in this clip than in the last one and, as with her other songs, is very well sound and sounds really beautiful.
Ainse soit je... ("So Be")
It's sort of a chaotic group of images; a girl and a deer, a girl in the water, a girl on a swing, etc.
Lyrics vs. video: Again, two translations of the lyrics, neither of which makes a whole lot of sense other than images relating to winter and feeling cold (emotionally) inside.
The song, again, is very well sung and very pretty.
Sans loguque ("Without Logic")
They put some metal horns on her head and she pretends she is a bull and one of the guys is the bullfighter.
She keeps charging him like a real bull. (Her hands are tied behind her back.)
The strange people watching throw money at the matador who has stabbed Farmer's character.
It gets weirder.
He was paying too much attention to the people throwing money and the "bull" managed to slam both metal horns into him.
She ends up crying tears of blood.
Lyrics vs. video: From what I can understand of the two different translations, the person talking/singing is noting that they are a duality, part angelic and part satanic, and if God creates in his image then why did he make the person part satanic?
It's some interesting lyrics. As to the video, I think it fits in a way since the Farmer character seems to change personas during the fight and ends up killing the matador when I think that the fight was supposed to be staged only with no one dying.
Again, as always, the song itself is very good.
A quoi je sers ("What Am I Used For?")
She's being ferried across a river much as in Charon and the river Styx.
Characters from other videos appear through the mist.
They end up walking together and disappear into the mist.
Lyrics vs. video: As far as I can make out from the one translation I have the person is thinking about what comes after death ("I'm living dust..", "I fear the vacuum..."). If I'm correct on my interpretation than it fits the video extremely well. The music is particularly pretty on this one; one of my favorite of her songs.
Disenchantee("Disillusioned")
The group she meets throws snowballs at her filled with rocks.
She's brought into a rat-infested holding area.
She instigates an uprising among the prisoners.
They gun down some guards trying to stop them from escaping.
They have no where to escape to, though. They choose to keep going, knowing that they will die in the harsh environment, but they'll die free.
Lyrics vs. video: The translation I found seems to be of someone who is very dispirited and that sorts of fits at least the end of the video. In this case, the video makes more sense than the lyrics.
It's also one of my favorite songs of hers.
Regrets
Two people meet in a graveyard.
Lyrics vs. video: The lyrics revolve around two people not wanting to have major regrets of their actions and the video sort of fits into this. The song is also a duet; her voice is clear but I don't like the man's voice very much.
Je T'aime Melancolie: (I Love You Melancholy)
She goes into a boxing ring.
The boxing match turns into an iron-man type of match and then a karate match.
She ends up knocking him out of the ring.
Lyrics vs. video: I have two translations of the lyrics. Neither one comes close to making any kind of sense (at least to me.)
Beyond My Control
She comes upon the man having sex with another woman. In another scene she bites the guy like a vampire, and in a scene a wolf tears apart some haunch of meat that's been put on the ground.
There's some other stuff like when the two are kissing and their mouths end up covered in blood.
Lyrics vs. video: The lyrics seem to deal with someone who has killed someone else, basically. This ties in to the video in the sense that the guy does not try to rescue the woman.
In any case, this is a rather rough video in the particular nature of the blood being spilled, the imagery with the wolves and the vampire-related attack. It also happens to be the rare song of hers that I don't like. I especially don't like the "beyond my control" being said over and over, ad nauseum, through the song.
Making of
Things are explained in French, of course, but even with that it's still fascinating to see how the videos are made. You don't have to speak the language to appreciate all the hard work that goes into making these videos.
Pourvu qu'elles soient douces:
A fake horse.
It's obvious they have done storyboards for the video.
A camera on rails for a moving shot.
One of the historians, I think, demonstrates to the jealous lover just how to shoot the pistol after she had tried and the pistol didn't go off.
Desenchantee
Bonus:
Maman a tort
An unusual sort of song and video. I didn't find any translation for the lyrics so I don't really have any idea what this video is about. The song is ok, but not that great, in my opinion.
Allan (Live, sort of)
This video is sort of fuzzy and more a blend of video and live peformance, and not from one life performance but apparently from a variety using different costumes.
Plus Grandir (Live)
Same type of "live" peformance as above, but even fuzzier.
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