Out of curiosity I watched ' Les Biches ' after many long years. I hated it in Paris at the time of its release and I hate it now, and I am not going to rehash the plot as it has been churned over far too often. Audran gives a performance full of mannerisms and as a lipstick Lesbian, so as to appeal to the basest instincts of the audience, she utterly succeeds, and falls into the clichés that have marred female homosexuality since cinema began. Chabrol may have thought it was a progressive film but it was not. It does nothing to explore in depth its subject matter, and is utterly shallow. Trintignant gives a performance that is void of interest and Sassard succumbs to cliché motions of mad behaviour that ends with Chabrol's favourite obsession which is sub-Hitchcock murder. The visual aspect of the film is ugly and the music which is good deserved a better film. I give it a 3 as it at least gives a glimpse of homosexuality ( albeit negative ) to a deeply homophobic French culture. I use the word homosexuality because bisexuality is part of the spectrum, and Lesbian bisexuality in film was more acceptable to an ignorant public who could condemn it while being sexually titillated by it. A badly made film that has no psychological interest but uses psychology so as to conform to the perception that same sex relationships must be broken up to admit heterosexuality, and by doing so comforts a jaded audience. That this leads to psychosis and murder is the nasty sauce on the rotten content of the film.
Review of Les Biches
