Chabrol's "Les Biches" doesn't exactly have meanings. It seems to be a mix of visual style, romance, and existentialism. There's not what you would call "characters" but rather types or suspended lives upon which sparse words are attached. If there is such a thing as "empty depth," this film has it in the sense that it carries psychological suspense and weight which, however, is headed nowhere except, perhaps, toward personal obsession.
However, there is the question of domination, both in the sexual and class sense. "Les Biches" begins with a materialized pick-up fantasy. The object is a young woman street artist; the subject is Frederique, a woman who's much superior in terms of class, income, prestige, and sophistication. She literally buys off the artist's resistance by suggesting to her something more than poverty and loneliness. Their initial sensual encounter, based on objectification and selection, is a prelude to Frederique's subsequent controlling relationship of her new protege, which chiefly takes place at her villa on the Riviera.
But Why, as her "name" implies is more than just an interesting challenge to her unequal lover. At a party, when she decides to give in to the architect's flirtations, she raises the ante a little too high for her noble patron, whose equanimity, generous spirit, and playfulness with others, is too strongly tested by Why. So, Fredy, in turn, raises her even higher--even to the point of taking on the architect herself as her lover. And so the game is played out initially in a somewhat friendly spirit, but when Fredy becomes more neglectful, more betraying, and demands more and more subservience, Why experiences a sense of fatality. Having lost both of her lovers, outcast and out-classed, and incapable of confronting them, she defiantly appropriates Frederique's body/mind. But even before the final twist, she plaintively begs Fredy to embrace her offer in a three-sided relationship.
Although "les biches" has several meanings in French, its suggested English meaning might, in the end, be the most telling. For it's as if the two women have been subjected to a deadly, rhapsodic cat fight in which each antagonist gets her "just" comeuppance.
However, there is the question of domination, both in the sexual and class sense. "Les Biches" begins with a materialized pick-up fantasy. The object is a young woman street artist; the subject is Frederique, a woman who's much superior in terms of class, income, prestige, and sophistication. She literally buys off the artist's resistance by suggesting to her something more than poverty and loneliness. Their initial sensual encounter, based on objectification and selection, is a prelude to Frederique's subsequent controlling relationship of her new protege, which chiefly takes place at her villa on the Riviera.
But Why, as her "name" implies is more than just an interesting challenge to her unequal lover. At a party, when she decides to give in to the architect's flirtations, she raises the ante a little too high for her noble patron, whose equanimity, generous spirit, and playfulness with others, is too strongly tested by Why. So, Fredy, in turn, raises her even higher--even to the point of taking on the architect herself as her lover. And so the game is played out initially in a somewhat friendly spirit, but when Fredy becomes more neglectful, more betraying, and demands more and more subservience, Why experiences a sense of fatality. Having lost both of her lovers, outcast and out-classed, and incapable of confronting them, she defiantly appropriates Frederique's body/mind. But even before the final twist, she plaintively begs Fredy to embrace her offer in a three-sided relationship.
Although "les biches" has several meanings in French, its suggested English meaning might, in the end, be the most telling. For it's as if the two women have been subjected to a deadly, rhapsodic cat fight in which each antagonist gets her "just" comeuppance.