La vieille fille

a love story. or only drawing of deep solitude. few portraits. meetings. and the salt air of a holiday.a film about common events, old words, not surprising choices. minimalist and honest. nothing strange, nothing unknown. almost a documentary.but it is different not only for dialogs or performance of lead actors, for mixture of characters silhouettes or for few scenes but for force of measure, for the isle of silences, for the skin of existences, fragile, strange, gauzy. collection of faces, gestures and search to escape from yourself, useful art lesson, demonstration of great importance of small things, bitter, nice, cold, it is, like each good movie, only a mirror.

A man and a woman meet in the same hotel in the south of France, while spending their respective holidays alone. The movie was released in 1972, when an unmarried woman of 30 was still called "spinster" and people, either men or women, were mocked for their being single, in two different ways. Several moments of inappropriate humor follow each other: "Do you want a room in order to sleep or to make love?" asks the receptionist, and suddenly shows a false embarrassment, hiding some mockery, when he sees that the man who has just asked for a room is alone. The woman is constantly shown on her own on the beach, making clumsy moves inside a big poncho to change out of her wet swimsuit, while around her, groups of people chat, flirt, and enjoy happily. In this movie (and the French should be known for being open-minded and avant-garde...) single people are sort of "aliens", lonely, goofy and pitiful and, when a man and a woman of that kind meet, it seems they are required to "combine their loneliness", no matter if they might not like each other completely. The same mocking humor invests the minor characters, no more than caricatures (the nymphomaniac chambermaid, the Anglican priest always talking of death, his wife who fasts and has stigmata drawn on her hands and feet...). Nothing happens, except for some stupid dialogues and some small awkward incidents, the background of the two characters is not revealed and a possible relationship between the two is just a (future) possibility. And what does the ending mean, with the two young girls, the same who talk nonsense in the first scene, now missing their train? If the original title is disrespectful, the Italian one, "La tardona", is highly offensive.

This is a story about "fitting in" where you (and everyone else for that matter) are the odd man.

"La Vieille Fille" is a chronological jig-saw puzzle. You get all the pieces in their proper order but as they are all laying "face down" you never know what the next piece will be until it's turned over and inserted into its' place. That's the way the story plays out.

Each scene is more like a series of still-photographs rather than a motion picture. Dialog is sparse. Actually, "dialog" is a bad choice of expression, as most scenes consist of a monologue. It must have been a very difficult film to direct. But as daunting a task in creating this film, as it must have been - it has succeeded! The short scenes and long, silent spaces give the male thinker time to identify himself. The mood is tangible.

Philippe Noiret has been around for a long time and he's always a welcomed contributor to any film. He does very well in "La Vieille Fille". If you choose to see this film your eye will be upon him the whole length of it and once you get settled into the story you'll begin to think it is you (yourself) prodding along, scene after scene - not Noiret – right to the final, parting shot.

WARNING: "Matrix" and "Die Hard" fans - look elsewhere. You'll find no exploding automobiles and ticking bombs here and you'll end up slitting your wrists or stringing yourself up before the film is half-way through.

Annie Girardot was THE French actress of the seventies .An outspoken nice personality ,she's cast against type as an old maid.But she's so good a thespian that she pulls it off with gusto,abetted by an excellent Philippe Noiret ,himself cast as a bachelor.Both are having a vacation at the seaside in a hotel .The man tries to make friend with her but it's a hard task because Mademoiselle Bouchon (=Miss Cork!!!)is an inhibited prudish woman .The dialog between them is intentionally down-to earth,dealing with "Oh What a lovely pebble!" "These are souvenirs for my family" .Only once they broach sexuality and not for a long time.Noiret and Girardot were such a wonderful couple that Philippe De Broca used them again in two of his late seventies movies .

But there 's a big flaw:the supporting characters are caricatures ,and although they are played by talented actors (Michel Lonsdale,Edith Scob,Marthe Keller) ,they really get in the way.That's why "la vieille fille" is only a good movie whereas it could have been a truly great one.

Likeable main characters played by amazing actors of the time, easy to follow and digest story and pleasant location are forming quality package for this amazingly low-profile French comedy from the seventies. Noire and Girardot are actually aged only one year apart and forming a beautiful leading couple, while supporting characters are also surprisingly interesting, although not very deep.