"FAR FROM PRETTY, the irrepressible Camille (Karin Viard) is none the less an attractive mess of a woman, caught between the past of her liberated twenties and the void of her future."--This Is London

"Camille has nothing going for her--not looks, not virtue, not even a personality to call her own, since substance abuse tends to turn everyone into the same mumbling ruin."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Camille is not an attractive person, both in person and personality."--Film Theory

"Viard has a naturally long face and slightly drooping eyes, which lends her a constant state of sadness."--Q.com

I will address these quotes in a moment. But first let me tell you about the movie: It was, I understand, a huge hit in Europe. But this is not surprising, because La Nouvelle Ève (The New Eve) looks and feels like a hit movie. Its formula for success? It has all these big ideas and claims about the new woman, the post-feminist Eve. She is free, addicted to drugs, and obnoxiously bisexual. She denounces marriage, stability, reasonability, children, the entire social order. She only obeys her senses, instincts, drives; she never thinks twice; she only acts, fucks, and consumes.

Yet, despite this huge intellectual project--mapping out the territory of the new, urban, hyper-liberated woman of the advanced capitalist world--the film is incredibly light. Indeed it's a comedy, and the ideas/concerns it raises (female identity, homosexual marriages, the future of left politics) are as substantial and frantic as bubbles in a glass of champagne. This is what Europeans call entertainment: Marx, sex, and a dash of slapstick. In America we call it an art-house hit.

La Nouvelle Ève's central character is a thirtysomething lifeguard. One day, just before she's about to have one of those modern breakdowns, she meets Alexis (Pierre-Loup Rajot), who is a married man, a political activist, and a serious dresser (he is always wearing something black and smart). Alexis helps her to her feet and she falls in love with him, pursues him, joins his political party, disrupts his family life, and then seduces him with a floral dress that reveals the full shape of her body. Excellent stuff! Eventually, Alexis' marriage falls apart, then the affair falls apart, and in the end everyone is unhappy. But at least they still have Paris, whose dazzling skyline is visible in the background of the final scene.

Now back to the matter of the quotes. I'm upset that so many critics, most of whom are men, found Karin Viard, the lead actress, to be physically unattractive. In fact, of the 10 reviews I read, only one review (on the Inside-Out Film website) said something vaguely positive about her looks: "Viard can look ugly and awkward, or beautiful beyond words." The rest of the reviews, though kind to the film as a whole, offered nothing but mean comments about Viard. In some cases, the words were so strong (one writer called her a whore), one got the impression that the reviewer not only relished this opportunity to bash a relatively new French actress, but felt it his moral duty to be mean and vicious.

The truth is this: Karin is beautiful. She doesn't waver between being beautiful and ugly. No, she's beautiful all the way. I suspect these men denounced her looks simply because she is older, in her 30s, and she doesn't hide it. She makes no attempt to cling on to her fresh years, but instead embraces her full age and body. Indeed, there is one scene which finds her waiting for her secret lover (the married political activist) on a big, comfy bed in a secret hotel room. She has her back turned to the door and she props up her ass in such a way that when he enters the room, he instantly sees it--round and ready to be ravished. In a word, she knows she is beautiful; the director (Catherine Corsini) knows she is beautiful; the 400,000 French folks who watched this film last year know that she is beautiful. Granted, she is a social mess, this new Eve, this creature of the senses, this boozer, this junkie--but she is not ugly.