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Les Biches (1968)

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From Time Out Film Guide

The film with which Chabrol returned to 'serious' film-making after his series of delightful thriller/espionage spoofs, this was also the film in which he began transferring his allegiance from baroque Hitchcockery to the bleak geometry of Lang. A calm, exquisite study, set in an autumnal Riviera, of the permutational affairs of one man and two women which lead to obsession, madness and despair. Each sequence is like a question-mark adding new doubts and hypotheses to the circular (as opposed to triangular) relationship as a rich lady of lesbian leanings (Audran) picks up an impoverished girl (Sassard), and whisks her off to her St Tropez villa. There, much to the distress of her benefactress, the girl embarks on an affair with a handsome young architect (Trintignant), only to find in her turn that architect and lesbian lady are in the throes of a mutual passion. Impeccably performed, often bizarrely funny, the film winds, with brilliant clarity, through a maze of shadowy emotions to a splendidly Grand-Guignolesque ending.

Author: TM

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

zipping through said...

Posted on Aug 31 2009 20:14 The musical scoring (- orchestration -) is also quite beautiful. Pity about the wrong,dull turn which the film takes after the 1st half hour.

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just me said...

Posted on Apr 20 2009 11:05 The initial portion of the film works brilliantly by introducing us to 2 strange, engaging girls : the rich Frederique from the South of France & the enigmatic Why waif. Their bizarre, outre liaison holds promise for an interesting film ; however, the film starts derailing when Why suddenly decides at a party that she likes men after all, or, at least, 1 specific male guest. She seduces him & makes a date for the following afternoon. The older girl suddenly & coincidentally decides that she loves this man also & seduces him on the following day, thereby resulting in a no-show for the aforementioned date. We are then supposed to believe that Why is willing to be a 3rd wheel in this menage-a-trois. Too many implausible coincidences & non sequiturs are present in this beautifully-shot film. ( SPOILER WARNING ) It resembles ' All About Eve ' . Particularly, the murder of the rich girl by the waif Why at the film's end is in this vein. It's not a bad film, but it fails to live up to its early promise.

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