Thirty-something French "girl" groupies boy-hunt at a film festival Sophie Letourneur and several co-filmmakers film themselves in this blithely frivolous round of days at the Locarno Film Festival partying and boy-hunting. Yes, it's even more self-referential: the background is a film festival, the other people a gallery of personalities or wannabes. Lest you think this might tread on Hong Sang-soo territory, let me set you straight: these ladies don't think or talk about filmmaking for a minute, and they're groupies, not industry people. The well-known Swiss film festival is just a pretext and a background. When they get to Locarno cinematic ambition is on hold and the exclusive focus is on possible romances or one-nighters with guys they meet over drinks. Letourneur's film is rough, lacking the usual French gloss, but it bubbles and flows quite well. And though Sophie (Letourneur), Camille (Camille Genaud), and Carole (Carole Le Page) are in search of a connection, a romance, or just a fuck, the real focus is on girl talk and girl-interaction, contemporary French style.
Les Coqillettes has been dubbed a French "Girls," paralleling the crude talk and blunt focus of Lena Dunham's currently in style US TV series. Only the "Girls" girls are twenty-somethings, and the "Macaroni-ettes" -- they so-dub themselves because at their apartment they most often chow down on pasta -- are a decade older, and we thought the French were more grown up and more sophisticated than this. If you want to hang onto an old-school picture of France, avoid
Les Coquillettes. As the blurb says, this is a "comedy of arrested development," and it indeed deserves credit for being so calmly "self-mocking." Indeed we must hope Letourneur and her cohorts Camille and Carole are not playing themselves, that if they can depict one among them as having a ridiculous crush on Louis Garrel, it's because they know Louis Garrel and have his respect (he does appear very briefly on screen and sends the girl a couple of Facebook messages).
Sorry, no press kit was provided so I cannot supply the names of the actors who play the guys the girls flirt with, except for Louis-Do de Lencquesaing (of
The Father of My Children), as an older actor who proves a bit too kinky when he goes to bed with one of the girls, so they agree just to sleep together, and she sleeps in because she's tired. Another one, known as Martin, a chain-smoker in a tight jacket, french-kisses one of the girls at a club, and she has the hots for him forever after. But when he reverses his initial distain and brings her to his hotel, she freezes up. Those are the only bedroom scenes, both flops. There's another guy who's part of the girls' scene, a big Italian in shades so taciturn and non-committal they start to think he's gay, but when he beds one of the girls -- reported, not shown -- she said it was great. So one for three ain't bad.
A feature of
Les Coquillettes is its up-to-date-ness, not only the slightly-more-crude-than-usual girl talk for French cinema but the very liberal use of social media, electronic devices, and texting. The cute, pastel-y opening and closing credits have a bright funny "texto" quality, so bright and witty in fact that the stuff that follows, a mixture of Fellini's
Dolce Vita and vintage Cassavetes, is a bit of a letdown, even though it flows and has good moments. But hey, you go, French girls!
Les Coquillettes was shot at the 2011 Locarno Film Festival, where Sophie Letourneur's short
Le Marin masqué was being shown, and debuted at Locarno 2012. In fact Locarno Festival director Olivier Pere makes a cameo appearance, as himself. The events are framed by introductory dialogues of the girls gathered in a bedroom back in Paris afterward remembering everything that happened.
Les Coquillettes/Macaroni and Cheese, 75 mins., opens in France March 20, 2013. After its Locarno August 2012 opening it also showed at Bordeaux. It was screened for this review as part of the MoMA-Film Society of Lincoln Center series New Directors/New Films, in which it will be shown March 25, five days after the Paris reviews come out.
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