Les Bonnes Femmes

The film tells the story of four attractive single Parisian women and their domestic and romantic encounters. Several of them work as saleswomen in an appliance store, one moonlights as an entertainer, and all are pursued by Parisian men both good and bad. Jane is pursued by men and portrayed as being more ditzy and happy go lucky. Ginette works during the night as an entertainer and reveals that she hates her day job with the other girls. Rita has a fiancé, but during dinner with his parents, one sees that he thinks very little of her as an intellectual and a person. Jacqueline is pursued throughout the film by a mysterious man on a motorcycle, and even turns down other men after developing feelings for him despite never meeting. However, after the two finally meet and proclaim their love for each other, the man murders Jacqueline in the forest and then flees on his motorcycle.

• Bernadette Lafont — Jane
• Clotilde Joano — Jacqueline
• Stéphane Audran — Ginette
• Lucile Saint-Simon — Rita
• Mario David — Ernest Lapierre (the motorcyclist)
• Pierre Bertin — Belin (the shop owner)
• Ave Ninchi — Louise
• Jean-Louis Maury — Marcel
• Albert Dinan — Albert
• Sacha Briquet — Henri
• Claude Berri — André, Jane's boyfriend

The film was a commercial failure in France, and wasn't shown in the U.S. until 1966.[4] Later it was subject to critical reevaluation, and is now regarded as the best of Chabrol's early films.[2][3] Robert Alden in The New York Times wrote that "Les Bonnes Femmes is not a perfect film, but it is a worthwhile piece of cinema and it deserves more recognition than it has had."[4] The Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote: "Chabrol shoves aside the mechanics of suspense almost entirely to engage us in a sensitive study of character. As a result, "Les Bonnes Femmes" remains one of his most individual—and most satisfying—works."[5] Time Out said: "At once a detailed portrait of Parisian life and an ironic, witty study of human foibles, the film remains emotionally affecting thanks to Chabrol's unsentimental compassion for his subjects."[6] Writing in The Guardian, David Thomson called it "one of Chabrol's best films, in which the four shopgirls he observes are all versions of the Emma Bovary dream. It's a great movie just because the people seem so ordinary and their lives so trivial."[7] Indiewire described it as "a simultaneously heartbreaking and chillingly dark piece," and added that "the cruel world he [Chabrol] depicts... is a man’s world, and women are just passing time in it."[8]

The murder in the woods scene inspired the climactic sequence in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 13-part miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).[3]

Les Bonnes Femmes at IMDb