Les collégiennes

This is a curiosity in that it is Catherine Deneuve's film debut. She is the little one that sneaks into the pantry at night pretending to be sleepwalking. I understand that most of her shots were removed from the film when it was sent to America, but this copy has all of them restored.

O course, the interest is in the moody and mysterious Catherine (Marie-Hélène Arnaud), who joins the school late in the year. She looks more adult than school child. Sylvie Dorléac plays the part of Adelaide, Sylvie is actually Catherine Deneuve's sister, as La Deneuve was Catherine Dorléac when she appeared in this film.

This film has been altered in another way. Georgina Spelvin (The Devil in Miss Jones) and, I'm guessing Yvonne Monlaur were added for American audiences. The luscious breasts and bodacious bootys were spliced in and the actresses appear no where else in the film. Their scenes are well lit also. You would think it daylight instead of night.

There is much speculation that Catherine Deneuve, who debuted in this film, is one of the older girls. NOT. She is little Adelaide, the sleepwalking, ice cream thief and nocturnal mischief maker. All her scenes on the DVD are in the original French with English subtitles to retain Catherine's voice. The rest of the film is dubbed in English. The film was released when Deneuve was 13. It seems the scenes were shot when Catherine was maybe 10 or 11.

For its time, the film was very daring; nudity and lesbian overtones. When released in the US, the New York film board tried to censor and block the film. Fortunately, they did not succeed as the courts ruled in favor of free speech.

Despite its frank (for the time) look at schoolgirl lust, this is ultimately a rather tepid melodrama in the traditional French coming-of-age genre. Due to the staid setting and pedestrian direction, it affords none of the retro-chic cachet of other foreign films imported by Radley Metzger's Audubon Films at the time. In fact, Metzger ingeniously shot and inserted some racier nude and lesbian scenes for the delayed import version (included on both the VHS and DVD releases), featuring a young, innocent-looking Georgina Spelvin! However, the requisite shower scene featuring Agnes Laurent is obviously from the original. There is also a gratifying hint of middle-aged adults being much more in tune with the girls' problems and desires than one would expect, and an equally fascinating subtext of adults (both male and female) lusting after the not-always-so-innocent girls.

The film serves best as a time capsule of the era just on the brink of the sexual revolution, and especially as a gallery of fascinating faces which decorated other Eurocult items -- Laurent, Estella Blain (who steals the show here with her exotic look) and, as a little girl, Catherine Deneuve, much spunkier than in any of her adult roles. Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog also believes he sees a teenage Bardot in one scene, but this is not readily apparent in the VHS version. Metzger would go on to create his own Euro-style schoolgirl epic, Therese and Isabelle.