Les biches - Le cerbiatte

The first time I saw this movie I liked it. The second time I thought Ho hum, the third time (OK I am practicing my French and I remembered this as a movie with a pretty clear sound track) I loved it.

It starts slow, a bit weird, but the intensity between the women works as the scene plays out and really starts to cook when they get to St. Tropez, but Frédérique is just too spoiled to know a good thing when she sees it and blows it.

Chabrol shows us just how stupid we can be when we don't know what we are doing, or just how much in love we are and how much stupider we get when jealousy sets in.

Stéphane Audran is just so cold and yet so vulnerable.

This one may get a fourth viewing yet, putting it in league with Chabrol's Le Boucher (One of THE BEST ever) and Casablanca.

Chabrol had a habit in the 60's of casting his wife in lead roles; these are often the most forgettable of his films. Stephane Audran was used for her object-like beauty (her cheekbones are really striking)but there isn't much behind the mask. Here, playing Frederique, a bisexual rich woman in glamorous decors out of Vogue or Madame Figaro, she gets to swan around in chic clothes and give jokey line readings. To the cook: "Vi-o-let-ta, je te pre-sen-te Ma-de-moisel-le Whyyyy-eee!"

Thankfully, there is a story to be told, and Chabrol does that competently enough, although there is far too much time given to those two stalwarts Attal and Zardi, here playing gay musicians sponging off Frederique. Jacqueline Sassard plays Why with no discernible interest or ability; she's got a luscious, pouting mouth but no presence on the screen. Jean-Louis Trintignant, the boy toy, is as earnest as a Boy Scout, which is all the part calls for. This is not a serious study of polyamory, or alternative sexuality or anything else. It's chic, expensive and dead.

'Les Biches', whilst not my favourite Chabrol film ranks among his best. On one level it has sumptuous cinematography on a par with 'Le boucher', another excellent score, courtesy of Pierre Jansen and some very stylish direction. All Chabrol's actors play their parts beautifully although Audran undoubtedly has the best material.

But what marks this film out and what many cannot appear to perceive is that it is not a meditation on class or a portrait of a 'menage a trois'. It does touch on those subjects, as do many of Chabrol's films, but this film is essentially about identity and it's destruction or absorption by another. Stephanie Audran's character is, put simply a VAMPIRE. This is humorously and beautifully established early in the picture when she first meets Sassard's character 'Why' on a bridge in Paris amid a Gothic mist and with Audran looking drained and evidently needing a new victim. Many have commented on Jean-Louis Trintignant's acting, arguing that it is bland or inexpert, failing to realise that as part of the plot he had to be 'consumed' by Audran and had to appear ineffectual. Compare Audran's extraordinarily vital, near superhuman character in 'Les Biches' to her purposefully meek character in 'La Rupture' and one can begin to see what a subtle and intelligent actress she is.

On first viewing 'Les Biches' some years ago I was mystified and like other reviewers irritated by the two scroungers Robegue and Riais. After further viewing it appears they are purposefully antagonistic and their apparently parasitic relationship points to them being Audran's familiars.

The raison d'etre of the film are the final sequences in which 'Why' ultimately escapes the fate of Paul and destroys Frederique by becoming her. So 'Les Biches' is essentially a nuanced and very stylised commentary on identity and it's struggle to coexist within a relationship.

Many films uses the "Menage a Trois" element to cause disturbances in the relationship between three people. "Les Biches" uses this device to completely destroy its three characters. A perfect psychological film, "Les Biches" is the ONLY film that I know where it doesn't use Menage a Trois as a facade, but allows the film to explore its themes of Jealousy and Obsession to a sensual and extremely disturbing effect. Not even Truffaut's "Jules and Jim" used the device to this extent. This film is suited for people who loves to watch movies that will make us think, rather than movies that tells us what to think. Truly a hypnotic character study on physical and spiritual obsession. Kudos to Chabrol, his lovely wife Stephane Aubran, cinematographer Jean Rabier, and the sensuous Jacqueline Sassard for their specific roles in creating a chilling masterpiece.

With "les biches" ,Chabrol entered his second and most fruitful period:the first one encompassed such classics as "les cousins" and "à double tour" but his formula began to wear thin in the mid -sixties with failures like "l'oeil du malin" "Marie-Chantal contre le docteur Kah" and the abysmal "le scandale".

Stephane Audran ,his then-wife starred in all these movies (roughly 1968-1973)bar two ("la decade prodigieuse" and "docteur popaul") and their spellbinding mysterious atmosphere owes a lot to her.

"Les biches " has not worn that much well though:at the time ,lesbians were not so common in the movies ,and of course they always had a bad end -see also Mark Rydell's "the fox" or William Wyler's "the children's hour"for that matter-.What remains today is not much :only the scene showing Jacqueline Sassard's trying to become the woman she loves by taking her clothes ,her jewels ,her make-up and her voice is still impressive today;what remains falls into the trap of triteness:the man who comes between the two girls ,the chic bourgeois life in Saint-Tropez under the snow,the two would be comic reliefs -who are not funny at all-....

"Les biches" is a must for Chabrol 's fans because it inaugurates his golden era ,which would give such classics as "la femme infidèle" or "le boucher".But the others can easily do without it.