Brigitte et Brigitte (1966)
Directed by Luc Moullet

Film Review

The glory years of the French New Wave were all but over when Luc Moullet made his feature debut with Brigitte et Brigitte, an oddball comedy that looks suspiciously like a mischievous send-up of the Nouvelle Vague and all who sailed in her.  Once Truffaut and Godard had successfully made the transition from critic to filmmaker, Luc Moullet, a fellow contributor on Les Cahiers du cinéma, was easily tempted to follow suit, beginning with a series of shorts.  Godard described Moullet's first feature as 'a revolutionary film', which implies he either completely missed the joke or was just being craftily disingenuous.

Brigitte et Brigitte starts out as a merciless satire on student life, mocking the ivory-towered pomposity of students and teachers alike and convincing us that there is nothing more absurd than an intellectual who is unaware of his own absurdity.  Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer pass the absurdity test with flying colours, their weird cameo appearances looking far less ridiculous than the legions of po-faced students who get caught in Moullet's mocking camera, dribbling over-embellished, second-hand platitudes with the forced solemnity of a priest officiating at a funeral.

Not long after their arrival in the capital, the titular Brigittes (Colette Descombes and Françoise Vatel) go on a sightseeing tour and give the city's historic monuments a score out of twenty (Notre Dame Cathedral scores a paltry 10).  It is at this point that the film looks as if it is turning into an attack on the diabolical art of criticism.  Who is to decide what constitutes good art and bad art?  Questioned by one of the Brigittes, a film enthusiast cites Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis as the three best American filmmakers.  A second film fan (a school boy) places these three at the bottom of his list (numbered 281, 282 and 283 respectively).  Another interviewee blames F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams for three generations of American delinquency (and he probably has a point).

The concrete certainty of these 'randomly selected' know-it-alls is laughable, but is this any different from the opinionated claptrap that comes out of professional critics (including presumably Moullet himself)?  If there's one thing that surpasses opinions about art it is opinions about politics.  Arriving at university, the Brigittes soon discover that students divide evenly into gauchistes and  fascistes, each group equally convinced of the superiority of its political standpoint.  Those who cannot commit either way are cut out of the democratic process.  Confronted with voting, one Brigitte cannot make up her mind whether to vote left or right and ends up being unable to cast her vote.  Better to be certain and risk being wrong than end up without a voice.

Brigitte et Brigitte is such a difficult film to pin down that it could be almost anything you wanted it to.  Devotees of the French New Wave will most likely cherish it as a prime example of this exciting era of French cinema - made on a micro-budget, wildly subversive and intellectually stimulating.  Those who are not particularly enamoured of the Nouvelle Vague can equally enjoy it as a scurrilous send-up of this hideously overblown era of French cinema - the best parody of a Jean-Luc Godard film that fifty-three francs and twenty-seven centimes can buy (I'm not sure exactly how much the film cost to make, but it clearly wasn't much more than that).  Love the New Wave or hate the New Wave, Brigitte et Brigitte is an eccentric comedy delight that has fun creating waves of its own. And if you think this film is strange, wait until you see Mollet's next film, the even more perplexing Les Contrebandières (1968).

Film Synopsis

Brigitte has just arrived in Paris from the provinces to start her first year at university.  So too has Brigitte.  The two Brigittes are dressed identically and arrive at the same train station - which is where they meet.  The two girls decide to hang around together, and their first priority is to find somewhere to live.  Accommodation is hard to come by in the capital but they finally find a place to stay.  By the time they have moved into their new bijou flat they are the best of friends.  Then it becomes apparent that they aren't so similar after all...