Club de femmes (1936)
Directed by Jacques Deval

Film Review

An astonishingly daring film for its time, Club de femmes is a curious combination of Billy Wilder-esque comedy and French romantic melodrama.  Although some of the risqué elements of the plot are pretty mundane by today's standards, there is still a great deal of comedy which should appeal to a modern audience.

Danielle Darrieux, later to become a star of French cinema in such films as Mayerling (1936) and Occupe-toi d'Amélie (1949), was only 19 when she appeared in this film.  She plays the exuberant man-mad dancer, Claire, a woman who will do anything to be united with her boyfriend.  This is just one of many sublime comic performances in this film.

On a more sober note, Else Argal plays the sensitive Alice, probably the first lesbian role in French cinema.  Unlike in so many subsequent films, the subject is treated with great sensitivity and tenderness in this film.

Lesbianism, prostitution, child birth out of wedlock, crime of passion, cross-dressing, female nudity - there is no shortage of material in this film to tempt the censors.  When the film was released, whole swathes of the film were cut. As a result of this mutilation, the film had meagre showing and was soon forgotten.  It was only when the film was rediscovered 50 years later that it earned the recognition that it merits.

Film Synopsis

A women-only boarding house in Paris provides an affordable sanctuary for impressionable young woman who wish to be protected from the corrupting influence of the male sex.  After all, young women are such fragile creatures and men are such despicable predators.  In this strictly female environment today's young woman is shielded from all the vice and debauchery that pollutes the modern world.  At least, that is the theory.  In fact, the boarding house is not the safe haven it pretends to be.  One of its boarders is infatuated with another.  One girl is prepared to do almost anything to smuggle her boyfriend into the establishment.  And the receptionist is happily running a prostitution racket.  It seems the young women of Paris are not safe anywhere...