Exhaustion Ahead

I sometimes spend my days sleepwalking through life, not entirely awake. That happens mostly when I've had very little to no sleep at all, or what is commonly called in a few exclusive circles as the "no sleep 'til Brooklyn" phenomenon. With Mutek starting tonight and the ignition of 72 hours in a row without sleep set to begin tomorrow morning, I can already feel the pain. I'm no longer 20 years old, and will in fact be 30 in less than a year. But I must insist : I like to party very much, thank you.



Tomorrow, while most people will slowly prepare for their happy hour, or mentally spend all their pay check in expensive Italian ties bought at Carrefour Laval, I'll be writing several articles that have long been due. The deadlines are here, folks, and it's time to pay them bills. Knock knock, who's there ? "A deadline". I've never been good with these things, but since I began gettin' paid by the word, I magically respect every time frame my editors are giving me. There's been this safari movies article floating around my head, and that's about the only thing I haven't done and for which I'm REALLY late. My public apologies go out to Mike White, editor in chief of Cashiers du Cinemart, as well as to the magnificent chimpanzee appearing in both Michele Lupo's AFRICA EXPRESS and Duccio Tessari's SAFARI EXPRESS (both from 1976).

My assignments for Contamination are going well; I just put my hands on the DVDs of THE THIRST and Howard Avedis' very promising THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE re-release, and I have to see CAPTIVITY pretty soon. I have interviewed Bender for the upcoming issue of Nightlife Magazine and have three other pieces to write.



Over the week-end, I'll be writin' and partyin'; on my schedule of artists to hear are, in chronological order, Magda & Richie Hawtin, Carl Craig, Mossa, Gamall, My My, Chic Miniature, Claude VonStroke, Audion, Miskate, Someone Else, Gui Boratto, Michael Mayer, Heartthrob, Jesse Somfay, and the Wighnomy Brothers. I might very well drop dead after this breath taking marathon, but one thing's for sure : it'll be pure ear candy !

So if you walk past me on Sunday at Piknic, don't be surprised if I'm all zombie-like and don't even look at you; my brain most probably will be at "off". I remember going to DiskHo's Matthew Dear party last year, on a Friday night, and leaving just to pop a On*Star and head over to Aria to hear Felix da Housecat. I didn't sleep all night or day, had a great meal at La Caretta on St-Zotique, and then went to a house party above Inbeat on St-Laurent on Saturday night to play a set at 2 AM, after drinking TONS of vodka / Guru. The police crashed the party at 3 but I couldn't be bothered; the guy owning the flat reduced the music's volume to a minimum, and I kept on playing like a madman. My first real night of sleep after that was on Monday night, after an orgy of sushis.

I ain't feeling like a million bucks right now and I could use a few days of rest, but I'm afraid that won't be possible. We'll just have to keep up with what we have and party like there's no tomorrow ! The recipe for that is to avoid sleeping, to make your week-end seem like an uninterrupted Friday night binge. Brilliant.

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Since Bud Spencer, alias Carlo Pedersoli, is a likable guy, I quite like him. I believe there's enough misery in this world without seeing the need for people to be rude on top of it all. That's why I rather like people who are in a good mood, or "good guys". And girls. The use of the masculine form everywhere on this blog is, of course, for convenience & speed purposes only.



My love for Spencer, for Italian cinema at large - and for Enzo Girolami Castellari's work in particular - made me seek out an episode of the "Extralarge" series, these hard-to-find TV movies shot in Miami between 1991 and 1993. Thirteen were made, and the one I've seen is called EXTRALARGE : BLACK & WHITE. In them, Bud plays Jack "Extralarge" Costello, a Miami private eye pretty much ressembling any role he's ever played : not very fast, but big, and with a heart of gold. He has a latina neighbor, in his Art Deco building, who happens to be his girlfriend, and many friends in the Miami Police Department.



From then on, anything is possible. In BLACK & WHITE - which I strongly believe to be the pilot, or at least the first in the series - it starts with a kleptomaniac ("Wendy", played by knockout Lela Rochon) inviting herself to a senator's garden party, and posing as a maid to infiltrate the rooms and steal stuff. However, she ends up fleeing with something very precious to the senator, and he sends his men after her with one mission : to kill her and come back with the stolen goods. While running away from them, she stumbles upon Costello's office, and decides to seek out his help. Meanwhile, good old Jack's met Dumas (Phillip Michael Thomas, found jobless and aimlessly wandering the streets of Miami by the producers), a French cartoonist interested by his physique, and has tied him up in the bathroom. The "Black & White" of the title implies, of course, that they'll team up to help save the girl, and that all things will come to an end without too much bloodshed.



But keep in mind : it's an italian TV movie; people die, people cry, and most stay clothed. Bad guys and corrupt politicians are more than common in this shark-infested city, and we can feel a bit of Enzo's love for MIAMI VICE here and there. However, everything seems cheaper than in the hit Michael Mann-produced TV series, and the running time is undoubtedly longer. The cars aren't as slick, and the wardrobes neither. The theme song, surprisingly, is an entertaining hip house hit that's very pleasant to hear. Played over the opening credits featuring sea-doo daredevils in traditional Castellari slow-motion shots, it has a certain effect.

What's also a nice surprise here is that old Bud's own voice is used in the final sound track; no silly dubbing is to be heard anywhere, which probably means that the whole production was shot directly in english. Which is a funny phenomenon; with all the late 80's Corbucci-shot movies Spencer & Hill did in Miami, and this Extralarge franchise, lots of people are still surprised to learn nowadays that Carlo Pedersoli, the irresistible bearded fatso, is not an American.

Wolves, Magicians, and Coincidences

I first became aware of Hugh Jackman's existence when I brought my mom out to see X-MEN in 2000. Back then, he was only beginning to blow out. His portrayal of Wolverine was wonderful, and the fact that he drank Labatt '50 in the movie only added to my excitement when I visited Ste. Catherine street's Vieille 300 and ordered the same thing to my man Mathieu. I have lately been exposed to him twice, surprisingly. First off in THE PRESTIGE, the latest Christopher Nolan flick, also one of the two "magicians" flick released in a few months - the other one being Neil Burger's THE ILLUSIONIST.



THE PRESTIGE proposes a story of friendship, deceit and revenge. A story that might have been childish and unbelievable had it been directed by someone else than Nolan. It's the story of two magician friends, Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), who learn the ropes together from "Cutter" (Michael Caine), a guy building various tricks & machines. However, their friendship will not last, following a tragic incident causing the death of Angier's wife, and they'll spend the rest of their existence fighting & competing with each other. Like kids, really.



What saves the day here is Nolan's lush cinematography, some welcome surnatural elements, and the deconstructed narrative, happening on different time levels all at once, giving us the key to understand it all at the very end. And the surprise awaiting is equivalent to a M. Night Shyamalan ending, offering an explanation that not too many acute observers could have predicted. The presence of David Bowie as Tesla, a misunderstood electrical genius shadowed by Thomas Edison's monopolistic brutes, is also candy for the eyes. Because yes, huh, I might not have mentioned it, but the action takes place at the turn of the 19th century. Nice period recreation, too. The excitement brought by the magical tricks performed and the inventiveness of these magicians' craft are all very fascinating. There's a few interesting women in there, but they're mainly accessories; Piper Perabo & Scarlett Johansson are both there as two-dimensional love interests, it would seem.



It would also seem that Woody Allen's SCOOP (also from 2006) shares a lot of similarities with THE PRESTIGE. Other than two key players among its casting, that is; Jackman & Johansson appear once again. It's a murder mystery with no edge, taken very lightly, with a once again ridiculous and neurotic Allen appearing, this time as the obsessive-compulsive and hilarious magician Splendini. Johansson is an American journalism student who's given a scoop by the ghost of a dead reporter when she's put in a "dematerialising" box during one of Splendini's shows. The scoop ? That the young and handsome Peter Lyman (Jackman), a lord's son, might be the "Tarot Card Killer" responsible for a series of prostitute killings, Jack the Ripper-style. Johansson will manage to track him down, meet him, and have him fall in love with her without much effort. And when the attraction is shared, she begins to doubt her late reporter's scoop. Splendini, posing as her father, will help her clear things up.



SCOOP features a very funny concept of dead people "cheating death", and appearing among the living to casually discuss their obsessions. It's a very Allen-esque idea, one he already explored in EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU in 1996, during the scene in which the dead rise to dance at the funeral parlor. You might want to argue that old Woody has his good and bad years, but the fact is that even his bad years are better than most filmmaker's good ones. Writing and directing one feature length movie a year must be extremely tiring, and yet Allen never slows down, and has been steadily churning them out since 1982, after a short break in '81 between STARDUST MEMORIES and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY.

You have to appreciate his two latest movies shot in London, a place that seems to have given him a new creative start. I'm sure that the well rounded Scarlett has a big part to play in all this - who wouldn't be inspired by her curves and incredible lips ? Jackman is a handsome upper-class bloke here, easily seducing everybody he comes in contact with, and very far from the hairy and savage Wolverine he plays in the X-Men franchise.



Speaking of which, WOLVERINE is coming in 2008, and Jackman will reprise his role in a movie written by David Benioff (Spike Lee's THE 25TH HOUR) and inspired by the "Weapon X" comic book series published by Marvel. Promising !

Une Remarquable Carence de Tolérance

Le ridicule ne tue pas, il paraît. Au sein d'une société graduellement de plus en plus tolérante, il est paradoxalement de plus en plus choquant d'être exposé à l'étroitesse d'esprit que persistent à adopter certaines personnes. La semaine dernière dans le New York Times, je suis tombé sur cette brève :



STUDENT SUES OVER ‘BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’

Alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film “Brokeback Mountain” in an eighth-grade classroom, a 12-year-old student and her grandparents are suing the Chicago Board of Education for about $500,000, The Associated Press reported. The lawsuit also names the school principal and the substitute teacher, and maintains that the student, Jessica Turner, suffered psychological distress necessitating treatment and counseling. The 2005 film, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys who attempt to conceal a gay relationship, won Academy Awards for direction, screenplay and score. The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court by Ms. Turner and her grandparents, Kenneth and LaVerne Richardson, said that the substitute teacher, referred to as Ms. Buford, asked a student to shut the classroom door at the Ashburn Community Elementary School last year and said, “What happens in Ms. Buford’s class stays in Ms. Buford’s class.” Mr. Richardson complained to school officials in 2005 about reading material that he said included curse words. Of the screening, he said: “This was the last straw. I feel the lawsuit was necessary because of the warning I had already given them on the literature they were giving out to children to read. I told them it was against our faith.”

Vous avez dit "n'importe quoi" ?!

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Bruno Mattei n'est plus. C'est la triste nouvelle que j'ai apprise en début de semaine en consultant mes courriels. L'homme, né en 1931 à Rome, était reconnu pour ses films fauchés mais sympathiques, qui ont pris un tournant fort douteux au milieu des années '80, comme ceux de pas mal tous ses confrères "artisans" de films de genre. Débutant dans le métier comme monteur, dans les années '60, pour des productions d'espionnage et des péplums, il réalisa en 1976 son premier film, LOVE SACRIFICE. Suivirent plusieurs classiques tels que SS EXTERMINATION LOVE CAMP et EMANUELLE AND THE EROTIC NIGHTS (tous deux en '77), ou son film de nonnes THE OTHER HELL (1980).



Il tournait rapidement, torchant plusieurs films par année avec un penchant marqué pour le sordide. Ses films les plus connus sont HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), un incroyable foutoir bourré de zombies et aujourd'hui devenu énormément révéré; BLADE VIOLENT (1983), un film de "femmes en prison" avec Laura Gemser; et RATS : NIGHT OF TERROR (1984), sa seule aventure dans le genre très "italien" du film de post-apocalypse.



S'étant progressivement retiré du domaine depuis 1996, Mattei effectuait depuis peu un retour aux films d'horreur, grâce entre autres à une persévérance remarquable et aux nouvelles opportunités offertes par la vidéo et la distribution de DVDs par internet. Ni les critiques, ni les fans ne sont tendres envers des titres comme CANNIBAL FEROX 3 : LAND OF DEATH (2003) ou encore ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD (2006), productions qui ont l'air extrêmement "fauchées" et que Mattei a tourné sous pseudo - entre autres avec son reconnaissable "Vincent Dawn". Plusieurs vieillards qui persistent à tourner ont un peu perdu leur "touche" avec les années (on n'a qu'à penser à Jess Franco ou, plus près de chez nous, à George A. Romero) et on se pose souvent la question : est-il préférable de se souvenir de ces hommes via leurs oeuvres les plus célébrées, ou de les voir continuer à nous offrir leurs visions sur pellicule, aussi piètres soient-elles ?



Je vous laisse méditer sur la question pendant que je vais visionner ROBOWAR...

Inner Ear

Needless to say, I've been bumpin' around town sick as a dog since April 28th, and didn't think much of it, until the symptoms started making me unable to sleep - and until a piercing migraine started being my best friend. I thought it was funny that only one side of my face (the right one) would be affected. I would wake up with a sore throat, after having coughed all night, my teeth hurting, my eye feeling as if pierced by a needle, with a massive headache. One morning I felt as if someone had stabbed my right ear. I couldn't get out of bed until six, prefering to sleep through the pain.



I've been sick before, but not that much. Every Spring, I feel bad for a while, and then it goes away. I usually suffer from one bronchitis a year, towards the end of the semester, when I'm so exhausted that my immune system is fucked. But it's been a busy winter so far, and since I stopped taking the bus on April 1st, the weather has been terrible - I don't think that biking in the rain with cold winds has helped me at all.

I started taking Sinutab, thinking I was only congested because of a cold that wouldn't quit. It did the job for a while until I had ingested all 24 tabs. I went back to get Sudafed, which proved kinda useless - it didn't take away any pain and seemed to work on my sinuses only on the left side of my face. I spoke with my pharmacist, and he told me to get Personnelle "rhume + sinus" caplets, filled with goodies like ibuprofen & pseudoephedrine. 20 pills later - I had to take them two at a time, every six hours - I wasn't feeling any better. I decided to haul my ass to the clinic on Thursday, my only day off.



I got there around 3 and waited for an hour, trying to begin Jon Lee Anderson's THE FALL OF BAGHDAD while an old biker was complimenting me on my tattoos. My doctor, whose last name is Chéry, examined me for about three seconds, after I told him about my symptoms, and concluded I had an otitis - a good old ear infection. I used to have one a year when I was younger, and the cure was always some delicious banana-flavoured syrup. No such luck this time - I got stuck with Apo-Amoxi, whatever the fuck that is. A pill every 8 hours for 10 days. My doctor also told me to ease up on the painkillers, because it was bringing my blood pressure up. Except that if I don't gobble up these fuckers like candy, life's a bitch.

So I went from drunk to drug addict in no time.

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Patrice Sauvé is the man we can find behind such TV series as GRANDE OURSE and he directed a few episodes of LA VIE, LA VIE. I have never seen what he's done, because as some of you might already know I am not the greatest television consumer in this world. Often, when a TV director jumps to cinema, it stinks. It looks like a 90 minutes TV show with a budget on steroids. Is that the case with CHEECH, Sauvé's first escapade for the big screen ?



Narrating the troubles of six inter-connected characters over one snowy winter day in Montreal, the movie focuses on Ron (a very hairy Patrice Robitaille), the boss of an escort agency that's just been robbed off its "book" - containing all of the agency's girls pictures. Ron is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and so is Stéphanie (Fanny Mallette), one of his female employees. His right hand man, a simpleton named Maxime (Maxime Denommée), is in love with Stéphanie and is trying to convince her to quit the biz. Meanwhile, another hooker from his harem, Jenny (Anick Lemay), struggles with an office day job, her customers (including a fat and midget-like moustache-wearing Luc Senay - I think he wouldn't be able to do the "split" nowadays) and the urge to switch agencies and go to Cheech's. Two neighbors, the apathetic Olivier (François Létourneau) and a supremely depressed guy (whose fictional name escapes me) played by Maxim Gaudette, exchange tricks & visits; Gaudette tells Olivier to call a hooker to make him feel better.

Of course, Ron will end up suspecting Cheech's agency of the break-in, and in the lusty and grey underbelly of Montreal, all these headcases will bump into each other and try to get through the day without cracking up. Amusing how a movie about an escort agency manages to slip through its 104 minutes running time without showing a single ounce of skin. The ladies stay dressed, and the men behave - cocks generally stay safely tucked in pants, except for one hilarious exception.



Patrice Robitaille does an honest portrayal of a man walking on a thin rope, stopping every now and then in the course of his day for "spirit moments", thoughts about life he whispers in his portable recorder, supposed to calm him down. He perfectly fits the role - his "tall pimp with messy hair and fancy but inappropriate shoes" number is funny and believable. Some of the script's coincidences are bigger than others, but overall it's a fun & touching movie, without any right-wing moral message (blush, MA FILLE MON ANGE) or redeeming finale. Among a landfill full of turds like NOUVELLE-FRANCE or MAURICE RICHARD, it is movies like this that keep Québec's cinematography well balanced, and prevents it from sinking into stinky, bottomless depths.

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In 2003, Glen Morgan directed the Crispin Glover vehicle WILLARD. That was his first job as a director after jumping the boat first from his writer's seat, then from his producer's Ferrari. One of the pens & wallets behind the first & third volumes of the FINAL DESTINATION franchise, the man has struck again, this time with an uneventful and unnecessary remake of Bob Clark's fantastic BLACK CHRISTMAS, from '74.



The story remains the same : some sorority girls stuck in school at Christmas are celebrating together, but are being progressively slashed in the course of the day. That's a nice excuse to show pretty girls gettin' killed, and a house secluded by a snowstorm.



While I have seen the original some years ago, my memories of it have already faded, and I can't really compare, except that John Saxon is nowhere to be seen in this one ! Instead, we get a bunch of extremely good-looking "teenagers" (played by Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert, etc...) who are disposed of by an insane guy freshly escaped from his mental institution. The psychopath has a rare liver disease that gives him a yellow skin - reminds me of something Frank Miller drew, no ? - and has been raised by a sluttly mother that he quite litterally ate after killing her, back in the good old days where matricide was still considered cool.

Insert some typical "girly" drama, family tensions, a local pretty boy who's boning two of the chickas - and even posting a saucy sex video on the internet ! - and you pretty much get a lil' 80-something minutes of good clean blood red fun.



The movie is well directed, and the gore is good - splattered here and there - but the violence is ingeniously suggested rather than graphically shown. The script doesn't make any sense, and even borrows some of its elements from Wes Craven's THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991). It contains everything : false shocks, red herrings, villains that don't really die, and uneffective police. As well as Crystal Lowe's best push-up bra. No nudity, though, which was a key in the original 80's slashers. I have mixed feelings; it's pure breed "teen" stamped junk, and at some level, I find it surprisingly entertaining. Go figure.

Not Hot Heat

Last Saturday marked the arrival of a cold in my life. The worst kind. A cold that makes you wonder if there's a garbage dump truck with too much exhaust rolling down your throat and dropping some baggage along the way. I have been sick all week, but it didn't prevent me from going out on Monday and getting way too drunk to remember everything that happened. I also got to bed very late every night, watched a few movies, and tried to keep up. On my Thursday off, after writing for a few hours & drinking coffee, I went biking around, went to Bender's place to listen to his latest tracks - some of them have been signed to Oliver Huntemann's label Confused - and went to eat burgers at Miss Bijoux'.

I was supposed to have a few beers with some friends later on, and the Drunk Rocker showed up earlier so we could down a few Sapporos. We slowly got drunk, and in between conversations about Lucie Laurier, Nelly Arcan and other uninteresting topics, something seems to have snapped somewhere. Was it a rattle in the air, or the mucus in my brain ? The gin or the beer ? The twelve million things I did and didn't do during the previous days ? I was deep in the middle of a cold, perhaps thinking I was living its final stage, an impression forced on me by the booze I was massively absorbing. My cold was perhaps due to the 30 rainy days in April where I biked to work. When I curse against the shitty weather, it's about its logical consequences that I think; besides the bad drivers you have to watch out for with your bike breaks not working when they're wet, you also have to consider that being soaked from head to toe by COLD water, and then exposed to a strong COLD wind, has to have an effect sometime, somewhere.



So about the snap. Did I become a different person that evening ? I don't think so. Was the way some people perceive me changed forever ? No doubt. Because Miss Bijoux got really angry, or something, and since she's in Toronto until the wee hours of Monday, I can't really ask her what's up. She suggested I should "grow up" in an email she sent me, around 3 AM that night. We are no longer a couple but I cherish her with all my heart and I really don't like doing something harmful to her, even when I don't even realise it.

When we left her place, we were joined by Kardec, and headed for the Bistrot de Paris. It's central, well situated, and sparsely attended. It's an old school tavern, with Video-Poker machines in the back and drunks at the bar. When we got there, there was a lady sleeping on the counter and I ordered a big Labatt 50 bottle. This is something we seemingly have lost - big beer bottles cannot easily be found in modern Montreal watering holes. I told the guy at the bar : "Just like in the good old days of La Vieille 300."

[Flashback : In 2001, back when the old S.A.T. was located on Ste-Catherine, in an old bank building in front of the Spectrum, there was always a line-up for the events we were going to, because the doors rarely opened on time. And you probably know that waiting in line with THE THIRST is quite boring. So we slowly started going to the Vieille 300, a tevern located just in front, sitting near the front window and drinking big beer bottles. When the line-up started moving, we would cross the street again, slightly drunk, and resume the partying in a "trendier" setting. The place, however, was so laidback that we started going there even when nothing was going on at the S.A.T. - basically every time we wanted to drink cheap beer and talk. The Saturday night waiter started remembering our faces, and one Saturday we were with a few girlies and it was closing time. The time had flown without us noticing. So the waiter came to see us and said : "Just so you know, it's 3:20. I don't mind you staying here longer but you'll have to move to the back and roll me a joint". We stayed there until about 6 AM and he paid for all the beer we drank. I was probably too intoxicated to notice but the next morning I found out that I hadn't spent much. I also took home quite a babe, but that's another story.

One day I was walking in front of the tavern when the waiter came out running, calling my name. He hadn't seen me in a while and wanted to know what was up. I told him that pretty fuckin' soon we'd do an "afterhours" again. When I went to have a beer with a friend a few months later, my friend wasn't there. The current waiter told me he had left. A few years later, my two friends Brigitte & Jacynthe were celebrating their 33th birthday and were doing it at the Bistrot. They asked me to DJ so I went there in the afternoon to hook up my turntables. The owner & I were looking at each other for a while, and at one point I realised that he was my Saturday night waiter. End of flashback]

That's when he recognised me. The rest of the night was pretty fun, but around 2 AM Kardec was ready for something else. He got us guest lists for the Peer Pressure showcase at Lambi, where Flosstradamus were putting the party in the place. On the way to the club we ran into Bruce Benson, who was text messaging in front of Salon Daomé. We chatted for a while and then climber the stairs of Lambi, where everybody was tightly packed. This place easily gets hot, and the chicks were also pretty hot themselves. But perhaps a little young. We drank only one beer and got out. It was over anyway. Downstairs we were chatting with the flyer girls, and the Drunk Rocker told me he was going home. A few minutes later I saw Kardec getting out and he proposed we go to his place to drink Chartreuse & listen to a few of his latest tracks.



Little did I know I would be there until 7:30, going through his record shelves quite drunk. When I jumped back on my bike after leaving, it was so sunny that I didn't want to go home. I just cruised the streets, puzzled by the view of a few people walking to work.

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My Chabrol of the week was LES BONNES FEMMES, a 1960 black & white shot classic. I logically wanted to see, after A DOUBLE TOUR (1959) the week before, what the follow-up would be. Chabrol is known for many things, and the three main characteristics of his movies are an hitchcockian eye, an obsession with upper class social mechanics, and beautiful women. The movie we're discussing today proposes two of the latter, focusing this time on a group of small time saleswomen and what they do for fun.



The movie begins with two of the girls, Jane (Bernadette Lafont) and Jacqueline (Clotilde Joano), being picked up by two partying womanisers for a meal and a grand tour of some nightclubs. Jacqueline saves herself for a man she'll truly love, and soon gets tired of the two guys' manners, and leaves. Jane has a boyfriend in the army, but she's somewhat easy and ends up following the men home and being tricked into a threesome. She gets home at dawn and wakes her roommate Ginette (Stéphane Audran). The next day, they go back to work where life goes on...



What we're faced with here is the quiet life of a few "modern" - for 1960 - parisian girls, where they dream out loud about passionnate love and walk around town looking for something to do. Men are presented here as a menace, and even those who, at first glance, seem innocent... are not. Chabrol takes us around some clubs and restaurants, people eat a lot, and we even get to visit the zoo. It's everyday life until the very end, where the tone shifts. The innocence is gone, the fantasy fades to be brutally replaced by a grim reality, and it concludes on an enigmatic note.



Claude Berri plays Jane's soldier boyfriend, in an early role. The two most breath taking presences in the movie are, of course, Clotilde Joano and Bernadette Lafont. Joano would play in another Chabrol, LES NOCES ROUGES, in 1973, and also appeared in Bertrand Tavernier's L'HORLOGER DE SAINT-PAUL in 1974 shortly before her death. Her beauty is gracious and tragic, and her soft eyes are immensely lovely. [She died in 1974 for reasons I could not find out. If anybody knows, please share the info with me...] Lafont is no stranger to beauty, and her right on portrayal of an easy-going girl with low morals does not for one moment take away her enormous charm. LES BONNES FEMMES is the kind of movie in which you fall in love with at least one of the girls, wether you're nostalgic or not about this long-lost era.