LES BICHES (THE DOES)(director: Claude Chabrol; cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant (Paul Thomas), Jacqueline Sassard (Why), Stéphane Audran (Frédérique), Henri Attal (Robèque), Dominique Zardi (Riais), 1968-France)
This is top notch filmmaking by a director who when he is on the mark is as good as anyone in the business. Stéphane Audran is Frédérique, a wealthy woman with lesbian leanings, who on a whim, picks up a young attractive, impoverished Parisian sidewalk artist, with the unusual name of Why (Sassard). She takes her to her other home in St. Tropez and introduces her to how the wealthy live. What complicates their relationship even further, is the arrival of Paul (Trintignant), a handsome and talented architect, who immediately makes love with Why, but soon finds he has more in common with Frédérique, so the two of them become lovers. Paul shows a keen interest in having a bisexual menage-a-trois, but Frédérique is determined to keep him for herself.
The film is divided into a number of segments that ask questions about the lead characters, questions they cannot readily ask about themselves.
That Chabrol has the audacity to weave a story around these three diverse characters, each searching for something inside them that remains a mystery to them, plays well against the unmitigated sexual yearnings and need to experience sex these three have in common. It is a way to look at the 1960s, that is through the lenses of these materialists, who seemed to shun that period's more typical cultural revolution. The women's search is a personal one, it is for some kind of comfort that can take away their loneliness. By all indications, they could care less about art or the world. Why knows she is not a good artist, and Frédérique could care less. Paul's search remains more of a mystery, as his only other interest besides these two women, is the love he has for his work.
Though the sex is not explicit, its tenseness is what is felt as an obsession, as Frédérique and Paul feel a happiness in their love that fills a void in their life that they couldn't find before. Why is the odd one out, but can't accept her fate, as she begins to transform, changing her look and style, so that she could become a clone for Frédérique. Once she has tasted this lifestyle, she can't go back to being a virgin sidewalk artist again. Paul, being the most intuitive of the three, senses a danger in the house, which also has two gay (Robèque and Riais) freeloading sychophants there, who are nasty sorts, having outlived their usefulness to Frédérique, and are asked by her, unceremoniously, to leave.
What makes this one of Chabrol's better films, is the unexpected resources of the characters to pull off this emotionally draining story: the females, the very fragile does of the film, and the male, who is the hunter, wrestle with the ambiguities of their sexual intentions and inclinations, as it leads up to the tragic ending.Their emotionally desperate situation always seems to be one step beyond their reach, as they get deeper and deeper into an unresolvable situation, with the film ending on its bleakest note, with a certain amount of vagueness still remaining, that is befitting a film that has told its story with all the style and clarity it could muster.
REVIEWED ON 3/2/99 GRADE: A
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