Les Bonnes Femmes

Les Bonnes Femmes was a film directed by Claude Chabrol in 1960. The film followed the lives of four shop girls in Paris. They are all daydreamers and dread their job. They only look foward to going out and partying every night.

Chabrol deliberately portrays his characters to be very exaggerated. The men in the story are all very weird characters. Marcel and Albert are portrayed to be rude and idiotic. They are overly annoying in this film. Rita’s fiancé is weak and quit, and will not stand up for Rita in front of his parents nor will he defend the women in the pool. The only man who seems to be of good character is Andre, but he actually psychotic and kills Jaqueline in the end of the film. I feel as though Chabrol makes his characters overact on purpose, such as the girl’s boss. The boss is not a very likeable character, but this is done purposely. The men in the movie are portrayed as immoral, and are all not likeable men.

The theme of love is constantly shown throughout the movie. All of the women are desperate for love and continually search for it. Rita seems to play off the fact that she is unhappy with her fiancé. I thought that during the dinner with his parents, Rita seemed miserable. Jane searches for love during her parties which do not bring her any redeemable men, just the annoyance of Marcel and Albert. Jane has a false sense of love and thinks that the man who is stalking her is destined to be with her. This ends up being Andre and when the two are together Andre kills Jane. The women are all looking for the same thing by different means, and none are successful.

Overall, this film was very interesting. It was a different film for the New Wave era in films because there was no specific relationship that the movie was built around. It was a very interesting movie with many surprises and plot twists.