La fille seule

I picked up "La Fille seule" ("A Single Girl"; French, 1995, with English subtitles) on video tonight and just finished watching it with a friend of mine. Neither of us really understood what the film was about or what its message was.

Nominally, the film shows a morning in the life of Valérie (Virginie Ledoyen), a woman probably in her early 20s, and her having to tell her unemployed and uninspiring boyfriend, Rémi (Benoît Magimel), that she is pregnant. It is also the first day of work for her, after being unemployed for a year or so. Much of the elapsed time depicted in the film is on the job - she works delivering room service meals to guests at a fancy hotel in Paris. The story is revealed in real time - when Valérie walks, we follow her until she gets where she is going, and then continue our almost voyeuristic tailgating of her. The shooting gives an impression of hand-held filming.

I enjoyed the concept of showing life as it is with time neither compressed nor played backwards or forwards. We see all of Valérie's morning - her walks down long corridors and rides up and down the hotel elevators delivering food, her signing of her employment contract, her washing her hands in a bathroom - everything. However, this becomes a bit monotonous - which could have been the director's goal - and I found myself imagining scene transitions and cuts to integrate the story's meaningful montages and leave out irrelevant trivia.

I didn't really understand what message we're supposed to glean. Valérie is surprisingly bereft of much emotion in most of the film; is "A Single Girl" a simple tale of the possibly mindless dehumanization some work can inflict on us? A depiction of monotony of real life? I don't think so. Maybe just an experimental play with time? That could be, but it could have been much more clever and interesting.

Like HIGH NOON, this film is largely set in real time, as it follows a day in the life of the young woman of the condescending title. Unlike the classic Western, there is no action melodrama, no compression of crises or events, no heroes or villains, no tension. This is not to say it's not an unusual day - the heroine informs her boyfriend of their accidental pregnancy, begins a new job and decides to change her life.

The film starts in a cafe, as Valerie tells her unemployed boyfriend Remi that she is pregnant. He is a selfish, shiftless idler, and his reaction is predictably self-centred. She goes to the hotel where she is starting work, attracting jealous hostility from one fellow waitress, lecherous advances from a waiter, and fending off friendly gestures from another colleague.

During the course of the morning, she serves an irritable Italian couple, a pleasant French businessman alienated from his daughter, and a neurotic wife who demands eggs for breakfast, and is found making love to her husband when Valerie returns. Exasperated, Valerie returns to the cafe, and the ever-indolent Remi. After his cowardly intimations of abandoning responsibility, she storms out, nearly getting run over except for Remi's quick reflexes. The shock seems to force her into action.

There isn't a single scene that does not feature Virginie Ledoyen, an actress whose talent was leodimmed in THE BEACH, but is highly regarded in France. This emphasis might please some of the actress's male admirers, but the problem with real-time is that the boring (or 'phatic' as intellectuals like to call them) bits cut out of most films are left in, all in the name of realism. And so we follow Valerie endlessly, walking down the street, walking up stairs, walking down corridors, riding in lifts, generally being surly. Ledoyen is not required to show much emotion - who does in every day life? - and so this interminable realism risks becoming monotonous.

LA FILLE SEULE is, therefore, a melodrama in the 1950s Hollywood sense, following as it does a heroine of limited options in her hermetic environment, where her personality and possibilities are restricted to her surroundings. The more Valerie walks down the same corridor, the more we feel she is caught in a labyrinth, and there are times when the decor seems to overwhelm her, as she is caught in long shot as just another feature of the frame.

However, in the great Hollywood melodramas of Sirk et al, the monotony and repetition finally turned in on the film, and the repressions rose to crisis point, bursting the scene in physical and emotional trauma. Jacquot refuses to exploit his material's potential for melodrama - any life-changing decision is elided, the film is determinedly open-ended - so while his film is 'objectively' authentic, it doesn't feel true - this girl is so alone, she is separate even from us.

Valerie's lonely plight is contrasted with that of the other characters, as Jacquot creates a patchwork of alienation, as well as offering his heroine pessimistic insights into relationships, gender (Valerie is determined her child will be a boy, such are the options open to women) and parenthood. Crucial here is the scene where Valerie signs her contract. She left her last job when a cook tried it on, and her female employer, Sabine's snide interrogations accuse her of using her striking looks to attract clients for 'tips'. Valerie is outraged, but a phonecall for Sabine from her vacillating lover shows how vulnerable she really is, and that the title has more general implications (see also Valerie's mother).

Many critics have compared the film to those of the New Wave, presumably because of the open-air filming and young heroine. The opening sequence with the pinball machine and cafe, the day-in-the-life narrative, and Valerie's short hair at the end all echo Godard's VIVRE SA VIE, but the film bares little real relation to that pioneering French movement. There is none of the breezy freshness of the original films, none of their engaging untidiness, romantic verve, personal poetry or wide-eyed wonder at the medium, never mind the rigorous critique of a Godard film like VIVRE SA VIE.

Passers-by might smile into the camera, but its movements are deliberate and elegant, making the film's 'realism' seem very contrived. This wouldn't be a problem if the film had used artifice to recreate the heroine's inner life - instead all we have is a big modern hotel, a bit of talk, unyielding characters, and lots, oh lots, of corridors.

A SINGLE GIRL (Benoît Jacquot - France 1995).

A little known gem with the beautiful Virginie Ledoyen in the lead. I have a special relation with some films and this is certainly one of them. I first saw it - not long after it came out - on Dutch public television in my final year in high school. I thought the girl in the main role (Virginie Ledoyen) was the coolest girl I ever saw and the film always stuck with me. Later on, largely due to her performance in this film, she would become a big star and continued to be in the limelight and even played alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in THE BEACH (2000), so that's probably why I kept remembering her role in LA SEULE FILLE.

For a large part, the film plays in real time as the camera follows Valérie on the day she finds out she's pregnant. She starts a new job in a hotel as a maid. Her day-to-day routines are followed, her various encounters with the hotel guests and her intermittent meetings with her boyfriend at a nearby café. He doesn't know how to handle the situation, he doesn't have a job and cannot seem to make up his mind about anything, let alone this situation. He is a bit of a loser. Off course Valérie is in the toughest spot but somehow she never ceases to lose control or overview of the situation. She is on screen all the time as the camera follows her constantly while she walks down the corridors of the hotel, in the elevator, walking down the streets. Even though she has an attitude, is arrogant and acts a bit too wise for a girl her age, she remains absolutely fascinating throughout the film.

The lack of plot hardly mattered to me, because it's compensated by Virginie Ledoyen's radiant presence. This is the perfect example of a film where one actor or actress completely makes it work.

Camera Obscura --- 9/10

Valerie tells her boyfriend she's pregnant, he's not sure what he wants. She's mad, but hoping he'll somehow turn around. The unsettled uncertain back and forth is very real. She seems better than the boyfriend, but doesn't quite know it.

Then off to work at a new job in a hotel. Rhythm varies with the headlong speedy movement of work and occasional moments grabbed for a nap or a smoke. Tensions with staff and guests make you worry about this young girl: any situation could explode. She seems calm outwardly, but you gradually get a sense of the roiling interior. Will she crack under the pressure? Mysteries--why is she so cold to the black co-worker? Racism? Worry? You're not quite sure. At moments things loosen up, the girl shows attitude to the point you think she might get fired. Can she be that tough, that self-confident? In a way, yes. She turns out to be an amazing character who almost thinks she's ordinary, though she knows the men are after her like a pack of wolves. She's young, you worry for her, but she can take care of herself. In the end she seems awesomely, unfathomably self-sufficient.

This movie seems to be about female power. A good pairing would be with Sautet's A Simple Story, about an older woman also outwardly ordinary (though beautiful) but with amazing contained power, a kind of integrity beyond any men she encounters.

Early one morning Valerie has to tell her unemployed boyfriend Remi that she is pregnant. She has decided to keep the child, but they argue whether they should break up or not. That same morning Valerie starts working in room service at a smart hotel. The film follows the routine of Valerie bringing breakfast to the guests, Valerie constantly trying to phone her mother, and Valerie's relations with the other staff.

This was the breakthrough role for the 19-year-old Virginie Ledoyen, best known in America for the Danny Boyle film "The Beach", and earned her a César Award nomination. It was well-deserved. This is a great film, with no real plot or structure... just a look at love and the life of a girl in real time. And, you know what? Ledoyen is the selling point. Anyone else in the role and who knows what would have happened? I will have to be on the lookout for her in other films, because she clearly has that spark...