Monday, April 9, 2012

Les bonnes femmes


Les Bonnes Femmes was Claude Chabrol's fourth feature, but in many ways it feels like his true debut, the first of his films in which his style is fully developed. Here, Chabrol largely forgoes the melodramatic and narrative elements of his first two films, as well as the brief detour into lurid Hitchcockian bombast that was À double tour. After that bigger-budget production, he returned to the street-level realism of his first two features, adopting an even rougher and looser style than even those films, while also sharpening his razor-sharp, unpredictable wit. The film follows a group of four young women who all work as salesgirls in an appliance store that never seems to get any customers. They stand around all day, bored and chatting, fending off the lecherous advances of their elderly boss, gossiping and talking about love. The four women are very different. Jane (Bernadette Lafont) is a wild party girl who loves to drink and laugh; she's dating a soldier but won't pass up dalliances with other men whenever he's not around. Rita (Lucile Saint-Simon) is happily engaged, though her fiancé Henri (Sacha Briquet) is something of a snob who obviously thinks she's uneducated and is afraid of what his cultured parents will think of her. Jacqueline (Clotilde Joano) is the romantic of the group, a serious young woman who is breathlessly waiting for a true love to come along and sweep her off her feet. Ginette (Stéphane Audran) is more mysterious and independent; she's the only one of the group who doesn't define herself in terms of men, instead sneaking off every night to sing in a variety show, simply because she loves to perform. Out of all the women, she's the only one who's doing something for herself, not seeming to think about men or romance, only doing what she wants to do because she enjoys it — even though she's also strangely embarrassed of her late-night theatrics.

Through his observation of the other three women, Chabrol is exploring the nature of relationships between men and women, and the portrait he paints is not a pretty one. The film is often pitched as a comedy, sometimes even a broadly hilarious one, but percolating underneath its surface humor are some very bitter, cynical conclusions about the nature of romantic love. There are three different templates for love on display here. The most traditional is the relationship between Rita and Henri. They love each other, and she seems happy — she sighs just thinking that he loves her — but the scene where he takes her to meet his parents over lunch reveals the cracks in their seemingly perfect romance. Before his parents show up, he barrages Rita with a series of admonitions and warnings, telling her what she should and shouldn't say, what she should order, and trying to hurriedly catch her up on some details about Michelangelo so she'll appear to know something about art. He's condescending towards her, and in the process reveals some of the uglier undercurrents of this relationship.


A different template for male behavior is provided by the duo of boisterous ladies' man Marcel (Jean-Louis Maury) and his older, out-of-shape friend Albert (Albert Dinan). These two pick up Jane and Jacqueline at the beginning of the film, loudly and laughingly hitting on the girls until finally the more flirtatious Jane gives in and agrees to go out with them that night. They take the girls out for dinner and to a strip club, then, after Jacqueline breaks away from them, they both bring Jane back to Albert's apartment. They're boorish and loutish, putting their hands all over her, clumsily trying to get her to agree to a ménage à trois before she finally just goes off with Marcel alone. Later, the girls run into Marcel and Albert again, at a swimming pool, but this time, they've already gotten what they want from these particular girls, so they just act like even more overt assholes, dunking the girls underwater and chasing them around the pool. Chabrol is obviously dealing with male archetypes here, and while Henri represents the spoiled mama's boy who seems nice enough except for his condescension and pretensions, Marcel and Albert are the perpetually single jerks who are only interested in women for sex, for a night of fun and no more.

Jacqueline stays away from men like this, even politely rejecting the advances of the boyish young guy who sweetly asks her out at her job. She's possessed by the romantic notion of true love, and she thinks she's found it in the form of a mysterious man with a motorcycle, André (Mario David), who's been following her around constantly, stalking her while she's out with friends or at work, but never approaching her directly. She builds up this mystery man into her ideal, and believes that she's in love with him even though she's never met him. When she finally does meet him and begins dating him at the end of the film, Chabrol presents their relationship as exactly the kind of idyllic love that she had imagined it to be, briefly allowing the film to get swept up in Jacqueline's romantic reveries. And then, chillingly, a love scene in a deserted forest area seamlessly transitions into a murder, as André strangles his new lover to death and leaves her limp body in the dirt. Chabrol shoots the scene in such a way that it's ambiguous where lovemaking ends and murder begins: a wide shot shows the two lovers lowering themselves to the ground, André climbing on top of Jacqueline, and then Chabrol cuts to a closer perspective that partially obscures the view of what's going on, as André begins strangling her. One doesn't even notice the moment at which her moans of passion become anguished bird calls of terror and pain.


This turn of events is foreshadowed by the scene where a middle-aged co-worker shows Jacqueline a grisly souvenir, a handkerchief soaked in the blood of a man who'd been publicly executed for killing women. She'd romanticized this man, this killer, referring to him as "so pale and handsome" that all the girls who saw his death were swooning and overwhelmed. Jacqueline looks at the handkerchief with wide eyes and quietly listens to this story, and it's hard to know what she's thinking. This woman may be older than the young women in the film, but it seems that she has not learned any lessons by growing older, she has not rid herself of the naïve romanticism that leads these women to allow themselves to be won over, repeatedly, by cruel, brutish men who don't respect them.

The twist, in the film's final minutes, may seem abrupt, but it's all part of Chabrol's deliberate rejection and subversion of the conventions of romanticism, particularly the kind of goopy Hollywood romanticism offered up by the movies. Chabrol opts instead for gritty, near-documentary realism in many scenes, and the sudden intrusion of narrative at the end of the film only serves to shatter these women's remaining illusions about love and men. Chabrol is rejecting the narrative of romantic love in the most jarring way possible, briefly hinting that everything's going to work out wonderfully for this couple, before abrasively tearing apart the Hollywood happy ending. The formation of the couple, the goal and raison d'etre of so much romantic cinema, is here tragic and deadly rather than cheery. This should have been the obvious destination, though: not only does Chabrol offer several visual clues in which André looks sinister and unsettling even before his true nature is revealed, but the film is scored to a driving thriller soundtrack that seems incongruously creepy and foreboding for much of the movie, until the ending makes sense of it.

Chabrol then drives the point home with a brilliant coda in which a new, anonymous young woman, shy and reserved like Jacqueline was, sits at a table in a club until a man (whose face is never shown) comes up to her and asks her to dance. As they dance, the woman staring pointedly into the camera, while romantic music plays and a disco ball glistens overhead, but the previous scene with André and Jacqueline makes the scene foreboding and sinister. What kind of man is this? What fate awaits this trusting young woman who just wants to find love? Will she be killed — or will she just get her heart broken?

13 comments:

DavidEhrenstein said...

A very nice readout of a truly teriffic film that nearly brought Chabrol's career to a screeching halt. While hailed by the Cahiers -- and anyone seriously interested in cinema -- Les Bonnes Femmes was a major flop. Because of it Chabrol was forced to reconfigure his career in a more commercial direction. On the one hand this was "selling out." But on the other the Tiger films and Marie-Chantal vs. Le Dr. Kha are beautifully crafted entertainments. They paved the way for Chabrol "righting himself" shortly afterwards with Les Biches, La Femme Infidele etc. But he never returned to the grey grimness oif Les Bonnes Femmes whose pessimism is as one with Rivette's Paris Nous Appartient

Ed Howard said...

I have yet to see anything from Chabrol's so-called "commercial" period, interesting that this film's failure directly triggered that era of his career. It's true that there's nothing else quite like Les bonnes femmes in his oeuvre - it's the culmination of his early period - but the cynicism and pessimism found here flow through much of his subsequent work as well. Certainly, this film's uncompromising attitude about the illusions of romanticism and bourgeois concepts of love is a theme that Chabrol would pick up again and again. Le boucher is probably its most obvious descendant in his work.

DavidEhrenstein said...

I'd city Betty and Une Affaire des Femmes as well, but their downbeatness is more absolute. les Bonnes Femmes has a wistful sadness about it. Chabrol doesn't put his heroines on pedastals but he sympathizes with them considerably. Their dreams may be paltry but the fact that the world forstalls even the simplest of them from coming ture grieves him.

Sam Juliano said...

This is one of my favorite Chabrols, and I am hoping that Criterion will somehow get the opportunity to follow-up their blu-ray releases of LES COUSINS and LE BEAU SARGE. But I believe that hope is a long-shot, since Kino appears to own the staeside rights. Chabrol's caustic wit is in full-bloom here, and his 'world is tiresome' coda is at it's most resonant. The ending is negotiated in Hitchcockian glory, and Chabrol examines people with the observational skills that mark his particular expertise. The pool scene is a prime example. Furthermore, the use of symbols (like the blood-soaked handkerchief of the guillotined sadist) hit the mark. Agreed that the comedy context is mitigated by cynicism and a dim view of romantic love. In this sense LES BONNES FEMME is uncompromising and as undiluted an example of Chabrol's method of artistry and world view as any of his films. hence, it's one of his best.

You have peeled away the gauze to again provide the blogging community with an incomparable examination of French New Wave cinema.

Ed Howard said...

Haven't seen Betty yet, but good call on Story of Women, David. The final act of that one is totally devastating.

Sam, I too wish Criterion would get to this one, the Kino DVD leaves a lot to be desired. I'd love to see someone do the proper credit to this film's importance by giving it a better release. But yes, it's pure undiluted Chabrol, definitely one of his (many) masterpieces and an especially direct statement of his ideas.

DavidEhrenstein said...

Betty is the best film about acholoism I've ever seen and in it Stephane Audran gives her greatest performance.

Sam Juliano said...

Where's does Wilder's film fit into the equation David, if I might ask?

Drew McIntosh said...

Ditto David's comments re: Betty, it's a complete masterpiece. At times it resembles more a Resnais/Robbe-Grillet object than a typical Chabrol, but it's still packed with the bourgeois skewers and obsession with dualities. Audran is indeed great (her last role for Chabrol I believe), but Marie Trintignant gives what is probably my single favorite performance in all of the Chabrol I've seen. She's just unbelievable in it, it's so sad what happened to her.

Great piece here, Ed. Les bonnes femmes is not only my favorite Chabrol, but maybe my favorite New Wave movie, period. That coda is so beautiful and chilling and haunting, I've always thought that the Beau Travail ending was a kind of nod to it. And of course Fassbinder took a lot away from the climactic murder scene.

DavidEhrenstein said...

Fassbinder was unrestrained in his praise for Le Bonnes Femmes.

What Wilder film, Sam?

Ed Howard said...

Looking forward to Betty more and more now. I've been watching lots of Chabrol lately and that's one of the next ones I'll be checking out.

Good comparison to Beau travail, Drew, I wouldn't be surprised if you're right.

Sam Juliano said...

David, thanks for responding. I am referring to THE LOST WEEKEND.

DavidEhrenstein said...

Oh yes, I see now. The thing is Wilder shows you what might be called a traidtionalalcoholic downfall. Ray Milland gets more and more dishevelled as he falls apart. Byt contrast Stephane Audran in Betty NEVER loses her ineffable stylishness. And part of the reason why is she isn't a woman "on her uppers" wanderign thew streets. She's got money. She check into a hotel and stays there -- driniking herself into obliviob.

Sam Juliano said...

I got ya. Nice delineation there.

I need to see BETTY.