CLAUDE CHABROL is often patronizingly set in a corner as the “commercial” French New Wave director, the one whose commitment to melodrama and thriller conventions led to popular success, but not the artistic heights of Godard, Truffaut, or Rivette. This glib assessment ignores how Chabrol’s professionalism was the coating one needed to make his bitter pills easy to swallow. No other New Wave films are as scathing in their satire as Chabrol’s. The aggressive originality of his fellow filmmakers announce them right away as artists, whereas Chabrol encourages people to think of him as entertaining, and rewards our patronage with vicious mockery of everything we hold near and dear.
Perhaps none of his films are as scabrous as 1960’s Les Bonnes Femmes, the director’s fourth feature. Chabrol’s formal clarity allows him the necessary distance from his subjects — four Parisian shopgirls — to sympathize with their plight, while still being mordantly precise about their fates. If the goals of these beautiful girls are love and success, the film’s overriding theme is humiliation.
When Jane and Jacqueline (Bernadette Lafont and Clotilde Joano) let two boorish businessmen looking for a good time pick them up, there are no tender moments when the humanity of the uncouth men shines through; only an increasingly sordid and pathetic night on the town. Rita (Lucile Saint-Simon) has put stock in her upscale boyfriend Henri, but her first sit-down with the potential in-laws exposes Henri as a demanding fusspot. Ginette (Stéphane Audran) is so set on a singing career, she’s willing to overlook her inadequate voice, which her friends can’t help noticing, despite how much they try to cover up after a show with praise for her performance.
Chabrol’s refusal to allow any brightness in these girls’ lives can seem mechanical at times, but there are flashes of humor all throughout Les Bonnes Femmes, and a comradeship between the women — sometimes affectionate, sometimes prickly — that keeps the proceedings from being unbearably grim. In fact, the film is very entertaining — not something many portrayals of unrelieved misery can claim.