If you must tell someone about a film, then perhaps say something original? No tedious 'saying of the plot'?
Well I'll put in my two francs worth also. In Les Bonnes Femmes Claude Chabrol's revealing light shines upon women doesn't it? It's in his title (though 'Good Time Girls' is a terrible translation, for it only reflects one out of the four girls surely). And it is towards 'Woman' that everyone's gaze is directed. It's to whom the songs in Les Bonnes Femmes are sung also: the nightclub crooner sings "You, you, you, you" to rows of upturned faces; and all those faces are the faces of women. And one of the characters in Les Bonnes Femmes (or is it voiced more than once?) refers to them as 'The Eternal Feminine'. Well, doesn't 'the eternal feminine' imply either that there is something in these four girls that is in all women, or at the very least that these four are a type that is so very common that exceptions to it are noticed as such (it is 1960)?
What is this type after all? Well all four, surely, see the love of a man as the thing that will fulfil them, and they see men as their way out of a low-income and drab working-life. Men are suddenly going to make life exciting. And then isn't Les Bonnes Femmes saying something about their intention? There are people who 'Do' and there are people who 'Be'. It's clear that all four of these film girls wish to 'Be' and not to 'Do'. They do not wish to 'Do' working a wage all their lives. To the dating-table they want the man to bring yes his personality but, in addition to that, clear qualities of hard work and persistence, and his status, and his career. 'Do-things'. In contrast to that these four girls are themselves much more focused on 'being' something (Oh dear). These girls bring to the dating-table . . . what? Une bonne femme would answer "Why, I bring myself of course!" By that, supposedly she means everything that is thought by her, and that is said by her, and her individual ways and her 'flavour' (it's a 'gurl' thing). Oh! and of course she brings her sex. Vagina power. She focuses on her appearance (the mirrors real and makeshift in Les Bonnes Femmes) and she puts herself out there. After that she hopes that men, at least some men, like what they see surely. To the dating-table she brings 'Be-things' doesn't she.
Soldier boyfriend - I'd be confined to barracks
Jane - Aren't I worth it? (And then she fucks a random admirer.)
I 'Be' and not I 'Do'. And isn't, right here, the meaning of that gaze at the end of Les Bonnes Femmes (below)? The four protagonists have as yet failed to entice excitement and love into their lives (well, one of them is dead). The brief appearance of the fifth girl at the end of the film is there to give us little more than a long confident gaze. She is ploughing on (beneath that fun disco-ball) where the other four may not have 'made it' yet, and perhaps unlike them she just might make it. She is looking at you and saying in a firm hopeful gaze - 'I Be'. (How much of the male audience of this movie in 2023 mutters to itself - Dear God save us. Men, why are you prepared to risk most of your wealth on these creatures?)
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