Les Bonnes Femmes

Brimming with the breezy energy of Parisian nightlife, Chabrol's long-neglected New Wave masterwork maps the dreamy desires and frustrated aspirations of four young women bored by their mundane job in a deathly quiet appliance store. Homing in on the tawdry emptiness of '60s urban swingers, the hypocrisies of respectable society, and the loutish womanizing of male sexual predators, Chabrol satirizes the times while lavishing tremendous sympathy on his female characters. Shot on location in the hip, fast-moving City of Lights, "Les Bonnes Femmes" is a perfect marriage of splendid acting and intriguing turns of events.

A skillfully made film with remarkable camera shots. We see the fate of four shopgirls who have different hopes and aspirations. While I would recommend it in general, I wouldn't recommend it to audiences who get easily depressed.

Wow! How great that this masterpiece of a film, unavailable on video for so long, is finally out on both video and DVD. AWESOME! FANTASTIQUE! If you like French New Wave films, don't even think twice before buying this, IT'S ONE OF THE BEST and definitely the best film of Chabrol's career, in my not so humble opinion."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 annoyingfact that the folks at KINO don't even give you the bare minimum option ofremoving the subtitles; all they give you is 14 chapters to click to andthat's it. It's a fine transfer as far as the picture quality goesthroughout, except for the final two chapters which all of a sudden seem tobe undergoing a 'light rain' in the form of some very annoying visiblevertcal thin lines on the picture. Also, the image letterboxing isundermatted 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 noidea where KINO got the 1.85:1 aspect ratio from that they declare on thebox. The film itself is around 1.66:1 aspect ratio (if I remember correctly)and as their own obvious slightly undermatted letterboxing shows. The soundquality, like on most cheaply made new-wave films of this period, is a cheesymono and barely passable.

Great study of working class women and their daily lives, ending with (spoiler alert!) a murder (the bang) and then a dance (the whimper).

This is a movie that's best to avoid. It objectifies women in the best tradition of the forties and fifties. The male characters are hateful, the female ones seem to have no self-respect. I saw it because I admire some of Chabrol movies but definitely did not like this one and do not recommend it.

Omnipresent lechery, boredom, and forced frivolity (with a dash of god-awful French pop music of the 1950s) dominate this beautifully-shot, pointless movie. Now, once you see the poster for Bizet's CARMEN in the office of the old lecher who runs the small appliance store you know that someone has to die violently. This small shop which never has customers has four attractive young saleswomen and an attractive not-so-young cashier. The twist here is that the bad girl (Carmen in the opera) will survive even though she hangs out with guys who rape her. The good girl who is looking for love (Micaela in the opera) will die at the hands of the heroic figure (the toreador in the opera, the stalker on the motorcycle in the movie). Carmen (in the opera) knows she is going to die because the fortune teller tells her so. But here our good girl is told by the the cashier that she will find love. She becomes convinced that love is on the way from touching the cloth that the cashier has that has the blood of a guillotined serial rapist and murderer. She thinks it means that she's going to find love, but we know the obvious: she is going to be murdered. All of the foreboding in this movie is totally obvious. It's CARMEN with a twist, as if CARMEN isn't a nasty enough story. The atmosphere of this flick made me want to take a shower after seeing it. At least, I got to see it for free from a DVD in the public library.

This is one of the earliest great New Wave films from legendary French director Claude Chabrol. A must see movie and one of my all time favorites.

Single girls in Paris looking for love in the 60s. Kinda sad. Music is dark and a bit irritating. Otherwise an interesting look at a depressing subject for women.