© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Labels And Identity Are Subversively Fluid In 'The New Girlfriend'

Courtesy of Cohen Media Group
Anaïs Demoustier in 'The New Girlfriend.'"

François Ozon's The New Girlfriend is about as French as movies get.

Only in French movies do characters act out like they do here and only French movies can make what these people do seem important. Since the 1990s, in films like Under the Sand and Young & Beautiful, writer/director François Ozon has put characters in situations that make you re-configure what you think you know and understand about human beings. He does the same thing with The New Girlfriend.

At the start, a pair of hands puts lipstick on a rather still young woman. Next comes a wedding dress and a ring – all to the sounds of Wagner's "Here Comes The Bride." But then the hands close the eyes of what you finally realize is a body being prepared for a funeral. And what's on tap is a scrambling of things like death and marriage, along with the precision of fancy women's clothing and makeup.

The body belonged to Laura. She and Claire had been friends since they were seven. Laura (Isild Le Besco) was bolder than Claire, getting her first kiss before her friend. Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) is mousy – at least in the way of gorgeous French actresses trying to look plain. Laura also married before Claire and she leaves an infant daughter behind. Before she died, Laura asked Claire to look after the baby and her husband David (Romain Duris).

That changes the game.

François Ozon sets the film in a wealthy suburb that seems to have no city attached. Big, new-ish houses preside over wooded lots that look more like Tony Soprano's northern New Jersey than France. It's really like nowhere at all – and the young marrieds in the movie seem disconnected from country or society. Claire's husband comes home from work in a suit, but you get no idea of what he does or where. Claire has a job, but apparently she only goes there when she feels like it. These people have no roots or ties.

Claire grieves deeply. It's a few weeks before she takes a run and stops by David's house. When no one answers the door, Claire lets herself in. Right off, the movie feels the violation of David's space, and then Claire sees something that makes her turn away in shock – until David calls her back. Once she comes back to him, she's hooked on the sight. David is feeding the baby on the couch, and from wig to footwear, David is dressed in his dead wife's clothes.

I don't want to tell too much here, but the movie moves into a nest of conflicting desires. Claire finds David, who uses the name Virginia, ever more attractive. They go shopping like girlfriends – at times it's very funny – but there's more than girlfriend stuff between them. All the while, this person jumps back and forth between David the man and Virginia the woman.

Claire and Virginia go away for a weekend to a place owned by dead Laura's parents. It's an immense estate and for the first time in the movie, the scene looks like France – a 19th century mansion, a village, all that. Here is where Claire and Virginia/David uncover other dimensions to themselves. They go to a gay bar, where all these social and sexual distinctions reach new complications. Who is what and what are they doing?

You might find yourself watching The New Girlfriend with your jaw in a full dropped position. Even the title cuts several ways. Early in the film, in bed, Claire's husband has his chest on view long before she does. The labels have to get rearranged; then you wonder how and why and if they matter at all. What's left is desire and even love, and they don't seem to need any other categories.

At the beginning, the white coffin closes over Laura's body. By the end, you wonder what dead means.

Howie Movshovitz came to Colorado in 1966 as a VISTA Volunteer and never wanted to leave. After three years in VISTA, he went to graduate school at CU-Boulder and got a PhD in English, focusing on the literature of the Middle Ages. In the middle of that process, though (and he still loves that literature) he got sidetracked into movies, made three shorts, started writing film criticism and wound up teaching film at the University of Colorado-Denver. He continues to teach in UCD’s College of Arts & Media.
Related Content