MUBI

Although Les Bonnes Femmes, is beautifully directed by Claude Chabrol and the pacing brings the viewer through a uniquely styled French film, the characters are shallow, uninteresting, and lose any ability to grab the audience after thirty minutes into the film. In the end, the viewer is left with nothing to think about, little care for the fate of the characters, and a feeling of a wasted one hour and thirty-three minutes.

I think this is Chabrol’s most underrated work, and one I’ve seen many times. My barebones DVD copy already survived two deployments in Iraq. There’s something about this film – the characters, the mood, the jazz tracks… you know something’s up. The scenes at the theatre with Stephane Audran moonlighting as a singer, as well as the public swimming pool scene were quite hilarious. I still have my 16-year-old bootleg copy on VHS, then finally saw it on the big screen one rainy day in San Francisco back in ’99. Is this on Criterion? 4-STARS on this one!

The four single women who work together all day long at an electric appliance store are ready for action at lunch time and when the store closes at 7PM. They are young, fun-loving and almost like school girls when they go to the zoo nearby at lunchtime. As the film progresses, the different character of these young women are revealed one by one in ways that bring them to life and make them seem more like real people instead of flat stereotypes. The tragedy that takes place in the film is hinted at in many ways from the very beginning but in a manner so blatant and subtle at the same time that it is difficult to tell what will really happen. Some of the behavior does not even make sense in light of the outcome but it allows the film to take the unsuspecting audience down the garden path to the surprise ending. Sensitive viewers are bound to experience a lingering frustration of some sort long after the film has ended.