Les Femmes (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 13, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Jean AurelRelease Date(s)
1969 (September 17, 2024)Studio(s)
Lira Films/Ascot-Cineraid/Prodis (Kino Classics)- Film/Program Grade: D
- Video Grade: D
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B
Review
A perfectly dreadful French sex comedy starring Brigitte Bardot and Maurice Ronet, Les Femmes (“The Women,” 1969), also known as The Vixen, is rather like François Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women but done in the style of Confessions of a Window Cleaner. The film has precious little of any interest, the final nail in this Blu-ray release’s coffin being it’s the worst video transfer I’ve encountered in many years.
Ronet plays Jérôme, womanizing bestselling novelist now deep in debt and saddled with writer’s block, thanks mainly to his time-consuming juggling of multiple girlfriends calling him constantly. He and his editor (Jean-Pierre Marielle) come up with a strange plan: hire a beautiful secretary to take dictation and provide sex-on-demand, no strings attached, to fulfill his sexual requirements without the need for emotional commitment. Applicant Clara (Bardot) is at first outraged to learn of this term of employment but just as quickly agrees, apparently hoping to sabotage the arrangement.
Jérôme and Clara leave by train for Rome—Jérôme can only write aboard moving vehicles—and he begins dictating his next book, also called Les Femmes and like Truffaut’s film a memoir of his relationships with various women. The bulk of the film cuts between them aboard the train, she mostly thwarting his attempts at sex, with Mondo film-like flashbacks of Jérôme with various women, particularly Marianne (Christina Holme) and Hélène (Anny Duperey).
While Jérôme is depicted as a sexist jerk, the alleged humor largely derived from his selfish, at times misogynistic behavior, even by 1969 standards his attitudes toward women and the film’s overall take on gender roles are embarrassingly dated when not also confused and certainly tiresome. Listening to Jérôme’s dictation is like suffering through 87 minutes of mansplaining.
As a sex film, Les Femmes is pretty tame, with only a modest amount of nudity, far less than found Britain’s ‘70s wave of crude, “saucy cinema.” The two things the film has going for it are Bardot’s playfully defiant attitude and the women seen in flashbacks, who are staggeringly beautiful even fully clothed. Some of these women have few or no other film credits beyond Les Femmes and were, one suspects, fashion models rather than professional actresses.
Though not one of Truffaut’s best, The Man Who Loved Women had its share of insight, a point. In that film, the protagonist, though as here an inveterate womanizer, doesn’t so much objectify women as pursue an unobtainable female ideal, shaped by his complex relationship with his own mother. Jérôme, by contrast, is just a self-involved jerk, and though Clara seems set-up to undo this, to force him to honestly reexamine his past relationships, nothing close to that ever happens. The film is just a long series of pointless, supposedly funny and/or arousing vignettes, failing on both counts.
Licensed from StudioCanal, Kino’s Blu-ray of Les Femmes is the worst video transfer I’ve encountered in some time, making this poor film even less appetizing. Presented in 1.66:1 widescreen, the color timing is appalling, in which whites are rendered pea-soup green. White telephones, tablecloths, plastic chairs, pages from Jérôme’s novels, the scenery outside the train windows—all green! The original French trailer, included as an extra feature, is somewhat drained of color but otherwise accurate, suggesting what the transfer should have looked like. The trailer is also observably sharper. It does look like the flashbacks were in part or entirely shot silent in 16mm (and blown-up to 35mm), often with handheld camera (adding to the Mondo movie effect), but nearly all of Les Femmes appears less sharp than the trailer. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono, in French only) is better, as are the optional English subtitles. Region “A” locked.
Compensating some is a good audio commentary by French film critic Manuela Lazic, who isn’t impressed much by Les Femmes, either, but puts the film into interesting context.
One of the worst releases of last year, Les Femmes is an easy pass.
- Stuart Galbraith IV