Les Biches (1968)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

The delicate art of seduction in the rarefied milieu of bourgeois respectability is dissected with skill and mischief aplenty in this unsettling melange of classic love triangle and psychological thriller.  Les Biches was a significant work for Claude Chabrol, a notable commercial and critical success that won him the Silver Bear at the 1968 Berlin Film Festival.  It also marked the beginning of a series of classic French thriller-dramas that not only defined the director's distinctive approach to filmmaking (inviting favourable comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock's later work), but also allowed him to leave an indelible impression on French cinema, whose influence continues to this day.

From La Femme infidèle (1969) to Juste avant la nuit (1971), via the inspired Le Boucher (1970), Chabrol's mid-period cycle of spine-tingling masterpieces provides a chillingly astute commentary on the darkest and deadliest of human frailties (especially those in a bourgeois context), as well as being some of the most engrossing attempts by cinema to probe the murkier places of the human psyche.

Les Biches is among the most unsettling and enigmatic of Claude Chabrol's films.  The sublime beauty of its presentation (Jean Rabier's eye-pleasing cinematography is at its most artful and beguiling), the intensely sensual images of the three protagonists succumbing to an all-consuming passion, the haunting lyricism of Pierre Jansen's eerily entrancing score - it's a richly seductive banquet of well-crafted film aestheticism, and yet throughout this orgy of over-charged sensuality there is a deeply troubling sense of unease, that gradually develops into nausea and then revulsion.

On the surface, Chabrol's familiar mélange-à-trois tale has little to unnerve or shock us, the only controversial element (at the time) being the overt nature of the carnal attraction between a middle-aged woman of means and her all-too-submissive toy-girl casually picked up off the streets of Paris.  (The film's title derives from a German slang word 'lesbische', meaning 'lesbian'.)  But, in a way that instantly evokes René Clément's Plein soleil (1960), we see that there is far more to the relationship between the two female protagonists than first meets the eye.

As the more mature Frédérique, Stéphane Audran serves up the archetypal Chabrolian heroine (the one that the actress played repeatedly, and not just in Chabrol's films) - the aloof, supremely elegant model of bourgeois charm and respectability, almost totally disconnected from the reality that she creates to the detriment of all who fall under her spell.  If Frédérique is the decadent spider, cosily lounging at the centre of a perfectly constructed web of self-serving malevolence, Jacqueline Sassard's character Why is obviously the innocent little fly destined for the most ignominious of predator-prey denouements.

Of course, as anyone who shares Chabrol's keen appreciation of human perversion will know, things are nowhere near this straightforward.  Far from being the naive victim of a predatory older woman, Why is in truth the most proactive character in the drama, the only one who has a hand in driving the narrative.  She alone appears capable of exercising free will and acting as an instrument of anarchy; Frédérique and Paul are no more than prettily painted automata, lazily coasting along on the smoothly running currents of subconscious desire.  As Alain Delon cunningly usurps Maurice Ronet in Clément's earlier film, to steal not just his allowance but also his identity, so Why is driven to take the place of her female lover, presumably to acquire the power over the male sex that she feels she, a mere proletarian ingénue, lacks.

The ubiquity of mirrors and double images in Les Biches betrays the fact that Chabrol sees Frédérique and Why as reflections of each other.  To reference a scene early in the film, we are invited to regard one of the women as being a fake, the other real; we never know for certain which is which.  (Comparisons can be made with other Chabrol films, notably the early diptych Le Beau Serge / Les Cousins).  By impersonating Frédérique, adopting her clothes and make-up but not her more subtle mannerisms, Why admits to being a cheap imitation, but surely it is Frédérique who is really the fake, relying not on her femininity but rather her wealth and status to control the men in her life (the Pinteresque misfits Robèque and Riais are an obvious illustration of this - no more than annoying house pets in human form).

For all her well-perfumed charm and dominatrix bearing, Frédérique is nothing more than a posh soulless mannequin forged in the mill of bourgeois conformity; Why is the real thing, a fully rounded woman equipped with real feeling, real charisma and real motive power - and this is the reason why ultimately she must triumph, just like the talented Mr Ripley in his homicidal homoerotic fantasy.  Why's moment of victory is entirely predictable, as glorious as it is sickening.  It is with a gruesome relish that the film reveals to us its take on the function of romantic love in the shocking final scene.  It is not, as the romantics would have us believe, the joyous union of two souls, but rather the brutal and deliberate conquest of one human will over another.

Film Synopsis

Frédérique, a wealthy heiress in her mid-thirties, is wandering listlessly across Paris when she happens upon an attractive young woman sketching chalk pictures on the pavement on the Pont des Arts.  While other passers-by drop loose change beside the busily preoccupied artist, Frédérique purposefully gives her a fifty franc banknote.  The two women start up a conversation and the younger of the two, who calls herself Why, accepts an invitation back to Frédérique's luxurious Parisian apartment.  Here, Why makes little attempt to resist her benefactor's attempts to seduce her.

Not long afterwards, the two women show up at Frédérique's spacious villa in the South of France.  Whilst she appears comfortable in the role of a lesbian gigolo, Why's hopes of a relaxing break are frustrated by the presence of her host's irritating houseguests, a pair of parasitic misfits named Robèque and Riais.  The harmonious relationship between the two women comes under further strain when they both develop an interest in a handsome young architect name Paul Thomas.  The latter is working on a major waterside development in the region and does little to discourage Why in her attempts to lure him into a romantic entanglement.

In fact, Paul is more strongly attracted to Frédérique and it isn't long before these two have embarked on a passionate love affair, from which Why feels bitterly excluded.  Still obsessively drawn to Frédérique and Paul, Why continues to cling to them both and even spies on them when they are making love.  In the end, the triangle is ruptured and Frédérique and Paul depart for Paris, leaving Why alone to nurse her grievances.  There is one final act to the drama, in which Why both usurps and assimilates Frédérique in order to consummate her seduction of her ideal man...