The Perfect Scent for a Little Pink Princess?

reflections on perfection and perfume in Black Swan (2010)

directed by Darren Aronofsky

Perfume is seldom given much air time in films--whether feature length or series episodes--part of the reason for which may simply be that scent is not visual. Perhaps even more importantly, perfume is simply not an important part of life for the vast majority of humanity, avid perfumistas notwithstanding. When perfume does make a brief appearance, it usually serves as a setting prop, a part of the interior decoration of a space where one of the protagonists lives. 

In Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman,Vincent Cassel, and Mila Kunis, with important contributing roles by Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder, perfume is shown only a couple of times, and it is the same bottle.

From the shape, anyone who knows anything about perfume recognizes that it is Chanel, but which Chanel perfume might this little bottle contain? To answer that question, one must consider the bottle in context. Nina (the Natalie Portman character), a twenty-year-old ballerina whose life quest is "to be perfect," has boosted the little bottle of extrait from Beth (the Winona Ryder character), who is described by some catty younger ballerinas in the same troupe (the New York Ballet) as "approaching menopause." 

That is, of course, why "the little princess" is on her way out the door, while her mentor and former lover, Thomas Leroy, the exceedingly French ballet director (played by Vincent Cassel), is attempting to fill Beth's now tattered toe shoes.

That's a lot to keep track of, for those who have not seen the film, which I do recommend, despite some gripes. Here is my IMDB review:

Psychological Thriller--not film noir

3 October 2014

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I was very intrigued to see that Black Swan was included in the 2014 Film Noir encyclopedia (published by Taschen). Maybe I don't understand what film noir is, but it seems that some people (the editors of that volume) were laboring under the ill-conceived notion that the word 'black' in the title "Black Swan" was a sufficient qualifying noir element. I respectfully disagree.

There is no crime in this movie at all. There is no mystery. There is the psychological and emotional breakdown of a ballerina under intense pressure by her mother and herself to be perfect. There is a sexist dance director who preys on his star ballerinas until they grow too old, at which point he kicks his "little princess" to the curb to make room for the next lay in line.

That all may sound pretty negative, so why did I give this movie a '7'? Because it really is the film equivalent of a page turner. There is lots of forward momentum, which keeps the story from ever becoming boring-- though I see that many of the "hate it" reviewers found the whole thing tedious. One detractor suggested that time would be better spent watching paint dry.

I do agree with the naysayers that the rival ballerina character, played by Mila Kunis (who had a huge full-back tattoo--hello? In a professional ballet troupe????) was not very believable. She seemed more like a frat girl looking to rack up as many one-night stands as possible in the shortest amount of time. I also dislike this director's general tendency toward hyperbole and histrionics, often verging on hysteria. (See: Requiem for a Dream for much, much more on that...). There is a heavy-handed but arguably incoherent Freudian undercurrent throughout this film. (If the Freudian line were right, then a less- frigid Nina would simply abandon ballet...)

Which reminds me of the fundamental problem with Black Swan: each short scene is brim with energy and seeming significance, but then nothing ever really ties it all together in a coherent way. The ending turns out to have nothing really to do with anything that preceded it--aside from the fact that Nina has had a major mental breakdown. Perhaps the harsh detractors were displeased that the action depicted throughout the film oscillates wildly between objective and subjective reality. Lots of hallucinations are included through the use of special effects in scenes which seem initially to be about the world of the film, not the skewed world of the main character's mind.

Nina, the Natalie Portman character, is exceptionally neurotic and annoying, to be perfectly frank. She constantly scratches herself, to the point of causing rashes and bleeding down her back. I was not convinced that such a woman/girl could really make it to the big league of ballet, for which the competition is no doubt incredibly intense. Nina is so fragile and devoid of self-esteem that Portman's performance struck me as more consistent with an introverted outcast devoid of any friends. For that role, I'd say her acting was good. Think: Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. For this one? I was not convinced.

I was happy to see the star of La Haine (Vincent Cassel) in the male lead role, though it was also somewhat annoyingly stereotypical. (All powerful French men are sexual predators--ce n'est pas vrai?) Despite its many flaws and its massive melodrama and endless clichés and stereotypes, I still found Black Swan worth watching. Would I watch it a second time? Probably not. So, to me, this is no masterpiece (a necessary criterion for which is the desire and even compulsion to view the film over and over again). But I do believe that Black Swan is worth watching once.

  

I did not see this film back when it was released in 2010. Apparently it garnered lots of critical acclaim and generated something of a cult following, as did the notorious Requiem for a Dream (2000), an oeuvre de jeunesse of this same director, Darren "Sledgehammer" Aronofsky. I am not at all fond of this sort of "shock and awe" film making, but in Black Swan there are enough competing themes woven throughout that even though all of them are pretty simpleminded and sometimes sophomoric, the sledgehammer effect is moderated to some extent. Which theme appealed most to those who love this film? Take your pick from the Aronofsky arsenal of pseudo and semi-intellectual clichés:

• true art demands sacrifice

• failed parents push their children to be what they never became

• women are esteemed for their physical beauty while still young, after which society cruelly deems that they are best hidden away far from view

• art is an inferior substitute for sex (Freud 101)

• everyone is incestuous and gay, to a greater or lesser extent (Freud 102)

The list literally goes on and on... From my rather negative reaction to the "just say no" War on Drugs feature-length info-mercial, Requiem for a Dream, I am now prepared to state, as the conclusion of an induction on two cases, that subtlety is not Mr. Aronofsky's forte.

Of course, that is precisely why he has been heralded as a true auteur by those who adore him: his messages are so loud and strident that you'd have to be stone deaf not to hear them. They also echo piles of platitudes bouncing around like so many ping-pong balls in nearly anyone's cranium, thus persuading them to believe that he really "gets it"--whatever one happens to believe.

Is Black Swan about achieving artistic perfection? Or is it about abject failure, the self-destruction of a young woman who tries hard to be perfect, but cannot surmount her own pathetic desire to please others: her mother, her director, her predecessor, the audience--in effect: anyone and everyone.

This need to please, to "be good", to endear herself to other people, to do what everyone thinks that she should do, consumes Nina's entire being. 

The number one culprit in this film, even above her lecherous director, is Nina's "self-sacrificing" mother Erica, who lives with her adult daughter and continues to fret over her as though she were still a small child. Erica is terrified of losing control and letting go of the last remaining hope that her own squandered life might still achieve some sort of vicarious meaning, however remote.

We've all heard and seen this song and dance over and over again, yet people continue to repeat the same mistake with each new generation. 

Alas, the fruit does not fall far from the tree: both Nina and her mother lack any degree of nobility of spirit. Who or what is to blame? Nature or nurture? Take your pick.

The mother and daughter are entirely obsessed with fame and success and with achieving the recognition of other people. For this reason, I find it ludicrous to consider them artists at all. Nina and her mother aspire to acclaim, not to "artistic perfection," whatever that's supposed to mean.

The perfume of perfection, then, turns out to be whatever Beth (Leroy's former "little princess") happened to wear. Had she worn Aquolina Pink Sugar, Nina would have stolen that bottle instead. Nina is devoid of any capacity for judging anything beyond a set of values generated by la foule. She looks out into the audience yearning for their applause, and that is why she steals Beth's lipstick, cigarettes, diamond earring studs and perfume.

Nina is altogether incapable of evaluating the quality of a perfume. Left to her own devices, she might well choose Pink Sugar--for its "pretty pink" color, as she describes the grapefruit her mother serves her for breakfast. Pink is also the color of the huge, thickly iced strawberry cake Erica buys to celebrate her daughter's success in being named the Swan Queen. 

Beth's bottle in all likelihood contains Chanel no 5. Why? Because it is a famous and even legendary perfume--perfect for a princess. Nina believes that by following Beth's example, she can become Leroy's new "little princess". Judging by her mother's silence on the matter, it seems that Nina does not really wear the perfume, except perhaps for her visit to Mr. Leroy's office, where she asks for the lead role of the Swan Queen in the upcoming production of Swan Lake. 

Nina may have worn the perfume along with the lipstick in her desperate effort to win the lead role, for the director does note that she has come to him all "dolled up". However, the aspiring Swan Queen definitely does not wear the perfume at home. Her mother takes note of the diamond studs in her daughter's ears but says not a word about the perfume scent which surely would waft strongly from anyone who applied Chanel no 5 to her skin. The best explanation may simply be that Nina takes a hot shower and lathers up with Camay soap to maintain her pink sheen after each day's rehearsal and before taking the subway home.

In the end, Nina dies having tasted, she says, perfection. In reality, she has been released from her suffering, her bleeding fingers and toes, once and for all.

Tom Ford Philosophizes in and on Film: Carpe Diem—with Style!

Review of 

A Single Man

a  2009 film directed by Tom Ford

Tom Ford: fashion designer, perfume house creative director, provocateur ... film director? Yes, indeed, his début film effort, A Single Man, starring Colin Firth and also featuring Julianne Moore, has established that the creative director of Tom Ford Beauty is also an accomplished film director—and a screen writer to boot!

I must confess that I came to this film with rather low expectations. I was very pleasantly surprised at how good the work ended up being. Critics have grumbled that A Single Man is "boring". They lament specifically the lack of plot and the hyper-aestheticism, but those are precisely the central themes of this film. The naysayers somehow missed in their visceral disdain that A Single Man, based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, is on its face and by intention much more about style than substance.

The message of A Single Man is a simple one, and for that reason some may find it banal: Carpe Diem. Live each day to the fullest, as though it might be the last. Tom Ford's embellishment of this cliché—if indeed it is one—is to focus on all of the aesthetic minutiae of which every life is filled, provided only that one has eyes to see. And, of course, a nose to sniff.

Perfume appears in only two short segments of the film. Near the opening, what looks to be a bottle of none other than Tom Ford perfume sits on the protagonist's vanity. The bottle is turned to the side, so we are left to guess which member of the Private Collection George Falconer, the troubled English professor played by Colin Firth, might be wearing. One thing is clear: he does not have the entire collection but a single signature scent, along with two bottles of what look to be classic cologne or after shave. One of the “goofs” of this film listed at the IMDB database is that the bottle of spirits consumed by the protagonist was created in 1999, but the action takes place in 1962. No one seems to have noticed that Tom Ford Perfume did not exist at that time, either. In fact, Tom Ford himself was born in 1961!

The second scene in which perfume is briefly referenced is when the professor is speaking with a departmental secretary, whose beauty he is praising in a rather inappropriate way—and not only because he is gay. George is enraptured by the woman, whose physical beauty is enhanced by her scent, which he recognizes and identifies outloud: Arpège.

This scene effectively conveys an idea sometimes lost sight of: that sex and aesthetics are two completely different things. George, being a gay man, has no physical attraction to the woman whose beauty he admires. He finds her to be an exquisite sight to behold, something to gaze upon in awe, an object of reverence, not desire.

Some would say that women should be regarded as neither sex objects nor art objects or repositories of aesthetic value. But that sort of view supposes that human beings have essences. I favor a more existential approach: that people are what they choose to become. If a woman decides to focus on aesthetics or to render herself physically attractive—whether as a work of art or as an object of desire—that can be a perfectly valid choice, it seems to me, provided only that it is a genuine choice. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. Work with what you've got.

The problem with beautiful women is not that they are beautiful, but that for most of the history of humanity, women have been excluded at the outset from roles beyond those of sexual partner, mother, and aesthetic object. More recently, as women have been afforded the opportunity to do other things as well, those three roles have become (and remain) choices for some.

My impression is that "beautiful" men have to deal with many of the same prejudices as do beautiful women. Stated starkly: many people have a hard time believing that a person can be both comely and intelligent. It's fine to be one or the other, but handsome, intelligent, and talented all at once? That would be way too many good genes concentrated in a single set of chromosomes!

Charlotte or "Charlie", the woman played by Julianne Moore in the film, has spent her life in the role of the beautiful young woman. She was married for nine years and raised a child. Her husband eventually left her—the implication being that he moved on to someone younger and more beautiful than she. Charlotte aged over the course of the decade of their relationship to become someone other than the woman she appeared earlier to be.

Charlie is the classic example of the woman who dedicated everything to her husband and focused primarily upon her beauty and his needs. She has no career, and now that her husband has abandoned her, she finds herself without moorings, a wealthy middle-aged woman who drinks heavily and wonders what she should do now that she is no longer a nubile young thing, and her child has also left the nest. (It is a bit unclear in the film, but the child may have been from a previous marriage.) Charlie never developed her talents nor pursued a career because she was too busy being the beautiful wife of her husband and the mother of a child.

The film is set in Los Angeles in 1962. At that time, women had many fewer options and opportunities than they do today. It is becoming more and more rare to find women like Charlotte in that sort of predicament, although it certainly does happen and is far more common in other parts of the world. But none of this is really what A Single Man is about. This becomes abundantly clear in a scene where George and Charlotte lie juxtaposed on the floor, wallowing in their respective state of despair. George is a college English professor. Having this credential, a successful career outside of the home, has done nothing to save him from his fate.

Charlotte may never have experienced true love, but George did, and he lost the love of his life after a relationship of sixteen years. The film focuses upon the existential despair of George, not Charlotte, though they are friends in part because they share the very same plight. Both have been left bereft: Charlotte because her husband abandoned her, and George because his long-term partner, Jim, has died in an automobile accident. The very identities of these grieving survivors have become bound up with people who are no longer a physical part of their lives but continue to dominate them psychologically from afar.

One appealing aspect of A Single Man is that it is intentionally and repeatedly ambiguous about a wide range of provocative questions regarding homo- and heterosexuality. Tom Ford leaves enough unanswered questions to allow the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions about the meaning of the bare facts of the story. To some, the fact that George and Jim were truly in love, and Charlotte never was, may be interpreted to mean that the love between two males is somehow higher or more exalted or more authentic than the business-like relationships which so many heterosexual marriages become as couples balance the demands of child-rearing and household maintenance.

In some ways Charlotte exemplifies the stereotypical “fag hag,” who ardently wishes, against all physical reality, that her gay male friend might finally see the heterosexual light. (They did have a physical relationship in the past but it did not work out—because George was really gay.) Yet the message in the film is not unequivocally that women are somehow inferior or incapable of true love. Heterophobes may read the text in that way, but a more catholic interpretation would be that love is very rare, between any two people, whether two men, a man and a woman, or two women.

Tom Ford manages to depict the relationship between George and Jim as one of true love, but also as natural as can be. While that sort of depiction may no longer seem revolutionary, given the recent social advances on this front, there was a time when homosexual love was regarded by a swath of the populace as pathological, something to be hidden and corrected or cured.

Homosexual love is presented as normal in this film, while the so-called normal “all American” family is depicted as somewhat unbalanced. George's next door neighbors, a typical suburban family of the early sixties, are cast in a rather negative light. In one brief segment, the young daughter, a blond child with a Rhoda Penmark-like demeanor (see The Bad Seed), catches a butterfly and destroys it between her hands by rubbing them together, crushing the delicate creature's wings to dust. (Animal rights lovers rest assured: the Humane Society monitored the production of this film and has certified that no cruelty was done!)

The juxtaposition of this somewhat boorish and coldly brutal family with the gentle homosexual couple next door seems to be a way of objecting to the erroneous attribution to homosexuals throughout history of psychological and sexual perversion. Again, a heterophobe might read too much into such examples, but a more liberal reading would perhaps acknowledge that cruelty and pathology transcend all demographic and gender-orientation lines.

The film offers a “sexual-preference-less” conception of love (analogous to “color blind”), though the only two characters who achieve true love happen to be two males. The message is not that every liaison between any two men is automatically better than any relationship between a man and woman. This becomes clear as George is confronted with two prospective “replacements” for his long lost love, but neither can fill the void in his soul. Jim was not just a sex object for George, as becomes obvious when he rejects the repeated advances of two different and very attractive potential suitors.

A Single Man plays out over the course of a single day. George has decided to end his own life, and he moves through the morning, the afternoon, and the evening with this idée fixe in mind. He goes to the bank and removes his insurance policy and other papers from a safe deposit box, returning to his home and laying everything out with the suit in which he wishes to be dressed while lying inert in his coffin. He attaches a note to the necktie to make sure that his last sartorial wishes will be respected: tie in a Windsor knot

He leaves a stack of money in a loaf of bread for his housekeeper, and cleans out his office at the university in preparation for his final departure from this world. Once all of the arrangements have been settled in his mind, George attempts repeatedly to shoot himself with a pistol in various parts of his home. 

He is unable to settle on the appropriate arrangement, where he should be when a bullet from the gun fires through his mouth into his head. 

After multiple failed efforts: sitting on the bed, lying on the bed, standing in the bathtub, and even buried within a sleeping bag, George gives up in exasperation, distracted by the phone ringing, which he knows to be his friend Charlotte, who has been awaiting his visit, bottle of Tanqueray gin in tow.

Eventually, after spending some time with a student who has been pursuing him relentlessly, George finally renounces his plan to take his own life. 

It is not quite clear in the film whether the two men slept together or not—the sequence of floating in water could be a reflection of either a physical experience or a dream—but something about the time spent with this sensitive young man changes George's view. 


He replaces the gun back in the desk drawer and turns the key to lock it in, ending what seemed to have been his inexorable quest to commit suicide. George then makes his way back to his bed, where immediately after experiencing a neo-Leibnizian "best of all possible worlds" epiphany, he proceeds to suffer a fatal heart attack.

This dénouement, like the rest of the film, can be read in a variety of ways. One is that what George and Jim had was sacred and should not be desecrated through George's involvement with another, younger man. Another way of understanding the film is as a profound expression of romanticism: that George and Jim's life together was complete, and once Jim had departed, it was George's turn to follow, not by his own hand, but by a force beyond his control. He died not because he was too weak to face the world without Jim, but because it was time for him to go.

Every single shot of this film is perfectly composed, not because Tom Ford was attempting to be artsy-fartsy, but because he really is. The extreme attention to detail, to making sure that every single thing is in its place and properly arranged with balance and symmetry, is an expression of an aesthetic vision of life. The highly stylized quality of this film reflects a desire not only to control the environment in which one spends one's time, but also to be able to gaze upon all within one's view in awe of the beauty to be found in even the smallest of things.

Would Chloé wear Chloé? Part 2: Coming Critically Clean

part 1

When is a Love Triangle 
more than a Love Triangle?

CAVEAT LECTOR: 
MAJOR SPOILER REMARKS TO FOLLOW!!!!!!

How many of the erotic thrillers in existence bottom out in a Lifetime Channel-esque family values defense?
By my count: one.

Chloé, a 2009 film directed by Atom Ergoyan

As we have seen, this work is an extended film essay on mid-life crisis and the ways in which, after a time, even the most romantic of relationships may eventually fizzle out like flat champagne, leaving nothing behind but memories of the "The Way We Were". Catherine and David Stewart were apparently quite the hot and heavy couple as youngsters, but times have changed and so have they. As the years--now decades--sped by, and wrinkles crept onto the corners of their eyes, each of the two pursued their career, and a son was thrown into the mix, with the boring and predictable result of distraction and exhaustion. Eventually the couple reached the point where they just weren't doing it anymore.

Or has David been fooling around with someone else? was Catherine's concern, her insecurity verily screaming out from nearly every single scene of the film. On the one hand, she seems to be a strong, independent woman. On the other hand, she is completely overwhelmed by the prospect that her husband may be cheating on her. The thought that she may have become undesirable constantly tears away at the successful physician, making her snap even at David's jovial banter with a mere waitress, who, in Catherine's eyes, now appears to be one of the many menacing threats with which she has suddenly become beset.

Do not proceed, if you have not seen this film 
and have any intention of doing so. 

Inquiring minds have straying eyes, which is why I provided an extra wall of spoiler warning. Now, at last, it is time to come critically clean. Chloé (the film) is not at all what Chloé at first seems. For one thing, Chloé (the prostitute) never slept with David, though she told Catherine that she did.

Near the end of the story, it finally emerges, after the depiction of a couple of hot and heavy erotic scenes between the young prostitute and the suspected cad, that the real reason for David's loss of interest in his wife is that he is simply too tired to sleep with anyone, worn down by his excessive workload as a college professor and growing older day by day.

Too many performances prancing about the stage; too many late nights grading bad term papers on Beethoven. By the end of the day, David wants nothing more than to sleep. He has simply lost the vim and verve and, well, drive, that he had in his earlier years. Yes, that's right, notwithstanding the mounting circumstantial evidence, Catherine's husband has not been sleeping with anyone, neither his middle-aged wife, nor his fresh as a daisy co-eds, as she had suspected and feared.

He skipped his birthday party not to spend extracurricular time with a student (the one whose image blipped into his device the next day) but because he, like Catherine, was constantly cringing at the thought of his inexorably advancing age.

This viewer was fooled by the film because in it the young prostitute described in detail a series of erotic scenes between herself and David which never in fact took place, though they were vivid enough to conjure up high-definition technicolor images in Catherine's mind. The images on the screen were how things seemed to the would-have-been-cheated-on wife, and that was what the viewer was permitted to see, as though the scenes had really transpired within the world of the film!

Clever, Atom, very clever. But why, one may inquire, would Chloé do such a thing? The clues begin early on, but ultimately the answer to the mystery is that Chloé, the prostitute, has fallen for Catherine, the gynecologist.

Eventually the two women wind up in bed in a hot and heavy lesbian love scene, as Catherine, in her despair, accepts Chloé's overture as a way of connecting with David, with whom, she believes, the young prostitute has recently connected. (No, I am not joking.)

Chloé, on the other hand, ascribes far more significance to the encounter, as she has grown quite fond of Catherine through their various meetings and discussions. 



The morning after, Chloé sends Catherine a souvenir of their afternoon delight, at which point it becomes clear that the young prostitute is now smitten with the distinguished older woman:

But wait, there's more: the fun has only just begun!

Regular visitors to the salon de parfum are apt to have been wondering in the back of their mind whether the inclusion of a son in this fabulous fable was completely gratuitous. A father, a mother, a son... could there also be some Freudian content here?

It seems as though Atom must have read your mind, for the son did indeed figure in the love tetrahedron of this not-so-little morality tale.

Early on in the story, Michael and Chloé had met at Catherine's office. Chloé had gone there to deliver papers documenting her STD-free state. Michael had stopped by to retrieve the formal suit which his mother had apparently picked up for him from the dry cleaner so that he could wear it to his piano recital.

The chemistry between the prostitute and the son was unmistakeable as they hovered for a moment over Catherine's copy machine. Michael, in particular, seemed especially taken with the young woman, perhaps in part because he had recently been virtually dumped (online!) by his own girlfriend, who had decided that she did not want to be "tied down" after graduation:

Naturally, Michael had no idea that Chloé was a prostitute, and his mother was taken aback to find that the two had been chatting while waiting for her to arrive. But it wasn't simply that she feared the potentially corruptive effect which a prostitute might have upon her son. No, Catherine had been suffering from her son's disaffection as well as her husband's at the same time. Having been seemingly abandoned simultaneously by both her husband and her once affectionate son, Catherine has been plagued by the specter of having somehow failed both as a wife and as a mother.

In reality, we have seen the real reason for her husband's lack of attention, and her son's was nothing more than the usual teenage aloofness toward parents who of a sudden begin to seem incredibly uncool and to be avoided, even spurned, at all costs. After all, uncoolness may well be contagious!

When Catherine catches her son with his girlfriend in the house, having just spent the night together, she is visibly annoyed, and the sight of their exuberant youth and the memory of how she and David had once been intensifies her growing concern that her husband is now sleeping with someone not unlike this young lady who has just spent the night with her son!

To return to Chloé, where we last left off, she had developed something of a crush on Catherine. When the young lovestruck woman shows up at Catherine's office, flowers in hand, the physician is visibly perturbed and recognizes that she needs to call a halt to this narrative as quickly as she can.

She informs Chloé that the affair was a mistake and that she is sorry, but they had a business relationship which is now over, and they are now through. She asks the young prostitute how much money she wants, and takes out a checkbook and writes a big check, ripping it from the pad and thrusting it at Chloé in the hope that she will take the money and be on her way.

Chloé is crushed and rails at Catherine, telling her that what they had was real and that she knows that Catherine knows that it was real and that this has nothing to do with money. Chloé does not want Catherine's money, she wants Catherine!!!!!!!!!!!!

Devastated, Chloé sets out to find a way to win Catherine back. Her plan starts with Catherine's son, whom she essentially stalks, following him to the Stewart home.

Being a handsome young lad, Michael naturally believes that Chloé has fallen for him. She asks Michael to show her around his house, and they end up in Catherine and David's bedroom, where Chloé proceeds to undress.




As they make love, in Chloé's effort to reconnect with Catherine, Chloé insists on staring at Catherine's clothes hanging in the closet. Michael does not understand why Chloé is not looking at him. Later, when Catherine returns home, she finds her son asleep in her bed with the prostitute.

A scuffle ensues, and Chloé appears prepared to harm Catherine with the hairpin which she gave her and found lying on her vanity tray. In the brouhaha, Chloé ends up falling off the deck, to her death.

Having won back both her husband and her son with the demise of this young woman of ill-repute, Catherine reigns triumphant once again.