'Les bonnes femmes', more than a half century on, is a curious piece of 'nouvelle vague' cinema. Black and white, it lends a sadness to a grey Paris, at a time when France discovers adolescence and and yearnings of the young working class. Claude Chabrol tells the tale of four shop girls looking for love in the wrong places. And yet,Jacqueline, understatedly played by the delicious Clotilde Joano, oddly finds it, despite disappoint, as the camera fades out on the light in her eyes as she dances with an unknown man in a nightclub. The young Stephane Audran and Bernadette LaFont and Lucille Saint Simon are in the cast. Pierre Bertin doesn't quite steal a scene as the lecherous Monsieur Balin. And we see a Paris that is no more; a Paris prey to plastic bombs and terrorist attacks in a France entering its ninth year of war in Algeria.
Review of The Good Time Girls
