La désenchantée

I admit I had to check the listings once or twice to verify that this wasn't a Bresson film: the lack of involvement as the actors delivered their lines seemed to be Benoît Jacquot's way of paying tribute to the master. Therese Liotard has never been quieter, playing the bedridden mother. Judith Godrèche as the daughter hardly ever cracks a smile, even though there are some funny moments in this very short feature.

When Mom asks Beth to go to the doctor's house for the medicine, she knows she's the sexual prey, yet the idea doesn't seem to affect her one way or the other. I really wanted to know what was going on behind that slender, pretty face. The encounter with Alphonse, the knife fetishist, should have perked her up, instead she goes to sleep. I sympathize with all the viewers who complained about the lack of passion in the storytelling, it got me down too.

This is a charming little film made in the agreeable French tradition of Vadim, Techine, Kieslowski, et al, in which the film itself reflects the director's adoration for its pretty young star. In this case we have Director Benoît Jacquot adoring Judith Godrèche, who plays a poor but principled 17-year-old Parisian girl disenchanted with her life, in particular with the choices she has in males. Her boyfriend tells her she should sleep with somebody ugly. Just why isn't clear. He is referred to as 'whatshisname.' She meets an interesting man, Alphonse, played by Marchel Bozonnet, but he is too old for her and, at any rate, still enamored of another. And certainly she doesn't want her mother's lover, referred to as 'Sugardad,' who is in his sixties.

Godrèche herself is as natural and unself-conscience as a child. Dressed mostly in thin house dresses that cling lightly to her body, she displays the clear eyes, the clean jaw line and sculptured arms of youthful innocence. The camera adores her face and stays with her throughout. Clearly she is good and good to look at, but I would not say she is as enchanting as Krzysztof Kieslowski's Irène Jacob (La Double vie de Véronique (1991); Trois Couleurs: Rouge (1994)) nor as talented as Juliette Binoche in Andre Techine's Rendez-Vous (1985). And of course not nearly as sexy as Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman (1957).

But comparisons are odious. This is a good film in its own right. The treatment suggests a short story from a literary journal, original, with quiet, unexpected tableaux of daily life leaving one to ponder. The climax appears without one's knowing it until the film begins the closing credits and then one understands what happened. There is a dark symbolic element throughout suggesting the bondage to the material world that comes when a girl is no longer a child.

Vietnamese-French actor Hai Truhong Tu is excellent in a small part as Godrèche's Chinese friend.

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While the rest of the art world has gone on to explore more and more interesting corners of art, the French are stuck in the sixties. That is because French film is heavily subsidized (by taxes on viewers of "foreign" films), and the subsidized films have to be characteristically "French."

Since the referees are all old guys, this means French film is still stuck somewhere in the past. We have here the standard French formula: you must focus on a pretty girl in contrite involved sexual situations; you must develop (but only partially) a hopeless angst, and you must directly reference a French poet.

If you like ersatz art, this "smooth jazz" art film might engage. But for me it is a fake art, subsidized shallowness.

This is one of Director Benoit Jackuot's ("A Single Girl"-1995) earlier films. It's another look at his appreciation of female beauty and the perils of Parisian youth. Beth (Judith Godreche) is a seventeen year-old student with a younger brother and a sick mother. We never seen the mother leave bed. They are poor and survive by any means, although their main support comes in the form of a check from an older man - a former lover of the mother we assume. Beth's boyfriend challenges her to sleep with an ugly man; she takes up the challenge as the film begins. It then winds its way to the inevitable conclusion, but her relationships never entirely let us down. Like the French poet, Rimbaud, she too at a young age begins anew.

Judith Godreche plays Beth, a seventeen year old girl coming of age in Paris. Beth's life is a bleak one. Her mother, a prostitute, is ill and cannot support Beth or her younger brother. Beth's boyfriend, identified only as "whats-his-name" is cold and abusive.

After a fight, whats-his-name challenges Beth to prove her love by seducing the ugliest man she can find. Beth takes up the challenge to spite him, and begins the sexual odyssey that lies at the center of the film.

This is a decidedly feminist film. The men surrounding Beth all treat her as a particular object. None knows, nor cares to know, who Beth really is. To the doctor she is a young woman to be made into a prostitute. To whats-his-name she is a possession. To Alphonse, she is a mirror for his own self-absorbed nihilism. Even her bedridden mother sees her as merely a potential source of money, if only she will surrender to the doctor.

Even the viewer is culpable. We see only sertain facets of Beth, and we can only imagine who she is in her entirety. Because the distance between Beth and the viewer never closes, we are forced into supposition. It is an uneasy position, a position that makes suspect any conclusions or judgements we make about Beth or her actions. The film does not provide us with an answer.