Les Bonnes Femmes *** (1960, Bernadette Lafont, Clotilde Joano, Stéphane Audran) – Classic Movie Review 9729

Director Claude Chabrol’s 1960 black and white romantic mystery drama Les Bonnes Femmes [The Girls] tells the tale of four young women – Jane (Bernadette Lafont), Ginette (Chabrol’s later wife Stéphane Audran), Jacqueline (Clotilde Joano) and Rita (Lucile Saint-Simon) – in a Paris electrical shop, daydreaming about exciting ways to spend their evenings and eventually finding love and happiness.

Ginette (Audran) sings in a music hall, others opt for frivolity or marriage, while the last young woman’s yearning for romance leads to murder. Ginette disappears at night; Jane has a boyfriend in the army but enjoys chance encounters; Rita has a fiancé with a snobbish family; lonely Jacqueline has a biker following her.

Chabrol’s fourth film is a disturbing yarn that mixes comedy, sentiment and the macabre. It is affectingly played and confidently directed, and welcome as one of those rarish films that proceeds unpredictably.

It runs 100 minutes but the cut version runs 92 minutes.

Paul Gégauff wrote the scenario and dialogue, with adaptation by Claude Chabrol.

Also in the cast are Clotilde Joano, Lucile Saint-Simon, Claude Berri, Mario David, Pierre Bertin, Jean-Louis Maury, Albert Dinan, Ave Ninchi and Sacha Briquet.

Some of the French public disliked the film so much they broke their cinema seats in protest!

It follows Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins [The Cousins] and À double tour.

Stéphane Audran (1932–2018).

Claude Chabrol and Stéphane Audran [Colette Dacheville} were married from 4 December 1964 to 1980.

Audran befriended Lafont on the set.

 © Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9729

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