Les bonnes femmes

Just to prove that portraying males as all-negative is nothing new, see Les Bonnes Femmes: the employer with wandering hands, the drippy suitor, his bossy Dad, the snobbish fiancé, the lurking psycho, the bad-jokes bully-boy and his fatty hanger-on, the absent lad on national service. Every one of them is no good. And yet the four shop-assistants are no better, they exist only for the men. Whatever the fellows throw at them, they're up for it. It's a chilling worldview, with a cynical twist at the end, (plus a tacked-on coda that seems to be from another movie). Along the way, there's some really hammy acting from the girls' employer that clashes badly with the realistic mood, and some longueurs as the girls get bored at work and we get bored right along with them. The young Bernadette Lafont is a joy, but she fades out in Reel Three when the lovely Clotilde Joano comes to the fore. Whatever happened to Clotilde? Her subsequent career was undistinguished, and she died at age 42. This is mostly a watchable slice of Paris life from the late 50s, although the Algerians who caused so much mayhem only a few years later are nowhere to be seen.

Chabrol's career is often seen as moving from the naturalism of his early films to the extreme stylisation of his great mid-period. It's not as simple as that, but in 'Les Bonnes Femmes', Chabrol achieves a balance between the two that he has rarely equalled. The story of four shopgirls, their work and social lives, has all the plotless and poignant banality of realism, while the closing third, with its move from Paris to the country, its seducer-cum-motorbike-riding-devil (reg. no.: 666) talking about the Creator, as little schoolboys called Balthasar pass by; and its closing vision of Hell/Purgatory bespeak a more Cocteau-like world of mythology and religion. But there is Cocteau too in the framing of Jacqueline in the shop window, while Chabrol's filming of treacherous nature later on is uncommonly vivid. Although 'Bonnes' is his least typical film, it is also his most lovable, and seems to get richer with the years.

The film's English title "The Good Time Girls" capture the essence of the film--four different women, working in a shop, moonlighting as they are not rich, and hoping to find a decent spouse. The shop itself presents the lecherous owner (who "keeps his distance") and an elderly cashier who hides her interest in BDSM (her fetish is a cloth dipped in the blood of a BDSM convict who was guillotined, with an insinuated relationship with a customer who asks her for money and gets it!), a beautiful Stephane Audran (moonlighting as a singer), and the attractive Clotilde Joano. And there is a murder, which hangs in the air without the outcome discussed further--one of the weak points of the over-rated film.

A friend of mine - a film scholar - once said that this film shouldn't work but it does. He was absolutely right. I cannot think of one good reason why this film should be as good as it is. The tone is observational, like many films of the "New Wave," but it lacks the frenetic energy of Godard, or the jaded lyricism of Truffaut. The tone of the film changes drastically at several points, and in any other film this would become a big turn off. But a strand of sincere honesty about the characters and their emotions holds the film together, stronger than any formality.

Let the film take you where it wants you to go, and the experience is wonderful.

i liked this film. it has an ambigious quality about it, almost paradoxical. it has a feel of a documentary and is observational in nature, yet there is a obvious message or view taken by chabrol and the women in this film. they're doomed objects of desire for men. the women have this elusive quality about them, they're beautiful and somewhat misguided about the men in thier lives. they seem unattainable, yet vulnerable to a ominous unspoken danger that awaits them that is denoted by the music. there's this creepy yet mysterious sounding music that runs through the film when the female characters roam through the streets. and for some reason, all the men in this movie are misogynist jerks! they disrespect these women and believe they're entitled to them. yet, these women flirt with them and passively resist them for most of the film. chabrol lovingly shoots these women and has affection for them, but also sadness at their romantic naivety about the men in their lives that will bring them doom.