Club de Femmes

This French farce suggests that mesdemoiselles who sleep around are redeemable, cops a peep at one-and-a-half pairs of breasts, and turns up an unmistakeable lesbian character. Set in a chastely run hotel for women, it traces the fortunes of various young residents of burgeoning sexual impulses: representing the dark side of female sexuality are a student lured into prostitution by the devious hotel telephone operator, and a bookish beauty who kills to avenge a crime against her beloved. But the tale of the spirited dancer (Darrieux), who smuggles her fiancé into the hotel and ends up pregnant, overrides the film's more serious implications to arrive at conclusions of Hollywood-style wholesomeness. Playful, energetic, and sustaining a high level of female hysteria, the movie is certainly camp, often riotously funny, and nostalgically enjoyable, but don't expect feminist leanings just because a lesbian's around.