What’s the importance of Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches at the time it was launched, 1968?
Stéphane Audran and Jacqueline Sassard in Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches (1968)
The sound of the word revolution echoes back to a recent past, the 20th century. It was the stage for many rebellions that have changed, in different intensities, the way things are nowadays. If you associate it with a specific decade, you could say that the 60s was an immense cauldron of different people from different backgrounds that shouted when they could hardly speak in a prostest for rights. This period was dated through music, movies, 2nd and 3rd feminist movements, students’ movement , black people’s movement, etc. Despite the distinct struggles, some of them would intersect (women+black’s movement) and there were so many people in power opressing others that it was impossible not to have those who would dare to speak against the political opression. Filmmakers of that time bet on political criticism through their movies such as new wave’s famous names Godard and Chabrol. While Godard did a straightforward approach to political issues (Le Chinoise,1967) Chabrol did it in a subtle yet polemical way. The French director brought to screen a movie that would shock the bourgeoise and conservative people at the same time he represented them.
Before it was launched, his country had been fighting for more rights to young students, homosexual people, and for a stretch in the left wing that was ruling the country at that period. Women were ahead of their time with their sexual liberation. The Neuwirth Law legalised contraceptives in 1967.The amazing Christie Laume launched in the same year the song Une Fille Libre that talks about women’s belief in their own capacities. In 1968, things got heavier with thousands of French citizens claiming for more rights and they were severely repressed by those who believed they were selfish people who were just seeking pleasure. Just a few months before this explodes, Claude Chabrol released a movie in which female sexuality is freely explored in a hypocrite aristocratic society. We meet two women with different backgrounds. One of them is Frédérique (Audran) whose wealth is expressed by her haughtiness. She throws money to a younger and much poorer girl, strangely named Why (Sassard). The last wonders why Frédérique got interested in her. She says she is talented and when they get into Frédérique’s house, a sexual tension grows between them as she watches Why taking a bath. There is no much physical contact and their dialogues look like a conversation between a mother and a daughter who wants to have her life style. Why soon meets a gay couple who are friends with Frédérique. In Saint Tropez, the young Why can’t resist the way Frédérique is assertive and elegant while she is naïve and compliant.
There are homosexual and feminist representativeness once they can both instersect in one political agenda. However, the focus of the movie is not on homosexual love, it’s on showing that your sexuality doesn’t matter, the French bourgeoise class only cares about showing off their exclusive lives. Frédérique and her friends display African souvenirs at home, they love fancy foods and games and Why, who once was devoted to street art, sees herself seduced by that lifestyle, the one that many people protested against months after the movie’s debut. The one that didn’t offer space to minorities.
There’s an issue involving most of the movies about homosexual couples: they never end up together. Something tragic has to happen to put them apart and here it’s not different. Love was actually obsession. We doubt if they were really a lesbian couple due to the arrival of a handsome man in Frédérique’s place. Anyways, only few movies are able to portray beautiful and honest stories about other kinds of sexualities other than heterosexual. It also happens to gender-related movies.
Although Les Biches wasn’t a feminist manifest in its entirety, we can’t ignore the power of a movie about women from different classes in love in a time when both issues were addressed in the protests of 1968 in France and other countries.
The Mouvement de libération des femmes (Women’s Liberation Movement, MLF) gained a strong attention that same year and the movie is a small, yet important part of the French culture at that time. Its power can be measured by how banned it has been in countries all over the world. Brazil and other countries in South America were under dictatorial governments. Claude Chabrol made his mark in the French cultural and political revolution by providing a material worth of analysis and a portrayal of the French society that hasn’t been the same since 1968.
