Les bonnes femmes (1960)
(Good Time Girls)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 102m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Clotilde Joano, Stéphane Audran
Synopsis:
Four Parisian women friends pursue their individual search for happiness but come up against the callousness, weirdness or just plain stupidity of menfolk.
Review:
The ostensibly contemptuous title, lit. 'The Broads', is misleading: the women are the only characters to be treated with any respect by the film-maker, and so draw our sympathy in their wistful Bovarisme. The style is light, if melancholy, until the inevitable irruption of murder in the screenplay, presented, disturbingly, almost in passing. Thus Chabrol's trademark pessimism takes over, as the quiet, serious type becomes another anonymous cadaver, and we end with a slow playout on an entirely new 'broad', clearly meant to be the same 'type' as Jane, Jacqueline et al. The film is notable amongst the director's work in that it 'feels' like a Nouvelle vague piece in its free-ranging playfulness, while initiating this career-long fascination with 'la bête humaine'. It also affords glimpses of the Paris that was, the night life and the places of work, where a two-hour lunch break meant you had time to eat out and visit the zoo, and where the lecherous patron could afford to employ no less than five women in an household appliance store which sells little more than a battery during the course of one working day.
(Good Time Girls)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 102m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Clotilde Joano, Stéphane Audran
Synopsis:
Four Parisian women friends pursue their individual search for happiness but come up against the callousness, weirdness or just plain stupidity of menfolk.
Review:
The ostensibly contemptuous title, lit. 'The Broads', is misleading: the women are the only characters to be treated with any respect by the film-maker, and so draw our sympathy in their wistful Bovarisme. The style is light, if melancholy, until the inevitable irruption of murder in the screenplay, presented, disturbingly, almost in passing. Thus Chabrol's trademark pessimism takes over, as the quiet, serious type becomes another anonymous cadaver, and we end with a slow playout on an entirely new 'broad', clearly meant to be the same 'type' as Jane, Jacqueline et al. The film is notable amongst the director's work in that it 'feels' like a Nouvelle vague piece in its free-ranging playfulness, while initiating this career-long fascination with 'la bête humaine'. It also affords glimpses of the Paris that was, the night life and the places of work, where a two-hour lunch break meant you had time to eat out and visit the zoo, and where the lecherous patron could afford to employ no less than five women in an household appliance store which sells little more than a battery during the course of one working day.
(Good Time Girls)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 102m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Clotilde Joano, Stéphane Audran
Synopsis:
Four Parisian women friends pursue their individual search for happiness but come up against the callousness, weirdness or just plain stupidity of menfolk.
Review:
The ostensibly contemptuous title, lit. 'The Broads', is misleading: the women are the only characters to be treated with any respect by the film-maker, and so draw our sympathy in their wistful Bovarisme. The style is light, if melancholy, until the inevitable irruption of murder in the screenplay, presented, disturbingly, almost in passing. Thus Chabrol's trademark pessimism takes over, as the quiet, serious type becomes another anonymous cadaver, and we end with a slow playout on an entirely new 'broad', clearly meant to be the same 'type' as Jane, Jacqueline et al. The film is notable amongst the director's work in that it 'feels' like a Nouvelle vague piece in its free-ranging playfulness, while initiating this career-long fascination with 'la bête humaine'. It also affords glimpses of the Paris that was, the night life and the places of work, where a two-hour lunch break meant you had time to eat out and visit the zoo, and where the lecherous patron could afford to employ no less than five women in an household appliance store which sells little more than a battery during the course of one working day.