Bonnes Femmes (Widescreen)

"Les Bonnes Femmes" is the 'lost' new wave film that's easily on the same level with "Breathless," "Shoot the Piano Player," and "Cleo from 5 to 7" yet completely unlike any of them.

Chabrol is playing around with genres here, exaggerating for effect. He straddles the fence between comedy and tragedy for the entire film, veering this way and that whenever it serves his purpose: to paint an allegory of absurd modern existence through the soul of 4 modern young French females (circa 1960 but just as valid today 40 years later). The surreal modern music at the beginning clues you in, and the magnificent final scene with the empty, tragic eyes of the girl finding her only happiness when a man asks her to dance brings it all together beautifully.

I saw this at the Nuart in LA and I didn't want to leave the theater after watching it twice in a row. As disappointing as Chabrol's films had been to me over the years, this one was a jackhammer of a surprise. The Hitchcock elements are there but they don't dominate and straitjacket everything else. It's funny, it's tragic, it's bizzare, it's a hundred things all that once and balances all the elements successfully. It's a film that has to be seen, its effect is visceral and poetic, very hard to describe in traditional 'movie' terms.

This film defines the "New Wave" aesthetic, which to this day, some forty years later provides a standard for Quentin Tarantino types to strive for. Films like these can only be directed by masters who have the nerve and audacity to bend genres to their whim and speak their ultimate truth through the nature of the medium itself. And no film is a better demonstration of Chabrol's credentials as an artist and master of the medium than "Les Bonnes Femmes."

5 stars for the film itself but 2.5 stars for the tranfer and the annoying
fact that the folks at KINO don't even give you the bare minimum option of
removing the subtitles; all they give you is 14 chapters to click to and
that's it. It's a fine transfer as far as the picture quality goes
throughout, except for the final two chapters which all of a sudden seem to
be undergoing a 'light rain' in the form of some very annoying visible
vertcal thin lines on the picture. Also, the image letterboxing is
undermatted and you can clearly see this on the very first shot when half the
'M' on the last name of the producers HAKIM goes off the screen. I have no
idea where KINO got the 1.85:1 aspect ratio from that they declare on the
box. The film itself is around 1.66:1 aspect ratio (if I remember correctly)
and as their own obvious slightly undermatted letterboxing shows. The sound
quality, like on most cheaply made new-wave films of this period, is a cheesy
mono and barely passable.

"Les Bonnes Femmes" is a fantastic film. I was really blown away. It hit the theaters of Paris around the same time as "Breathless" and many of the other New Wave splash-makers. Like those films, it shows strong influences of Hawks, Hitchcock, and other Hollywood directors. Also like those films, "Les Bonnes Femmes" is set in a less glamorous Paris, but without exploiting it for its seediness. The dark street scenes look beautiful through the camera of cinematographer Henri Decaë, who is also the director of photography on such notables as "Le Samourï," "The 400 Blows," "Bob le Flambeur," and many other fine films.

In addition to having a good deal in common, stylistically, with the early films of the likes of Truffaut, Godard, Demy, and Rivette (and with the Hollywood auteur-films revered by those names), "Les Bonnes Femmes" reminded me a great deal of early John Cassavettes films. I couldn't say whether or not Chabrol had seen "Shadows" by this point, or if Cassavettes cared for "Les Bonnes Femmes," but I think there is a real kinship between these films in terms of the handling of dialogue and acting. At least *I* think so.

The ending is a real conundrum for me. (SPOILERS COMING! Don't read on if you haven't seen "Les Bonnes Femmes" yet!) As soon as Jacqueline was united with motorcycling beau, I could tell right where the film was taking us. Why? Because Chabrol so heavily quotes "Nights of Cabiria" in the final portions of the film. But anyways, what do we make of the film's ending? Some argue that Chabrol is offering grim truths of the realities that such girls face (Jacqueline's case being an extreme example), and that Chabrol is suggesting that these girls deserve much better. That seems a bit tough to swallow to me, given the film's closing shot, which depicts a new girl - seemingly more socially conservative - enjoying the good life, dancing with a dapper-looking gentleman in a tux. I've heard the final scene described as hopeful, which to me seems bizarrely off-base. How can a viewer feel that this girl is safe after we saw what happened to Jacqueline? And maybe that's the point. Although I don't think the film lends itself well to a definite or concrete reading, I feel very strongly that the final scene (with the new girl) gives the film an extremely moralistic close. We go from our good-times girls - who as we see get killed for their good times - to a proper, feminine, and committed society girl who seems to possess all of the world's promise and happiness. What I do not know is whether this moral epilogue is meant to be preachy or ironic. But I digress....

In sum, "Les Bonnes Femmes" is a fantastic film. It is easily accessible, has a wealth of unexpected surprises in store, and is a fairly effective social commentary. And I think the film is far more complicated than it lets on.