LES BICHES

France, 1968, 100 minutes, Colour.
Jean-Louis? Trintignant, Jacqueline Sassard, Stephane Audran.
Directed by Claude Chabrol.

Claude Chabrol had been making films for about ten years when he made Les Biches. His focus of films in the 1960s and into the 70s was on domestic dramas with crime and explorations of responsibility and guilt. These films include This Beast Must Die, The Unfaithful Wife, The Butcher, Just Before Nightfall. Les Biches seems a different kind of film – although it stars his then wife Stephane Audran who featured in many of his films in the 60s and 70s.

Audran portrays a very rich woman who picks up a strange and eccentric young woman whose name is Why. She is played by Jacqueline Sassard who appeared in Losey’s film, The Accident. A tense relationship grows up between them which is complicated by their attitudes towards an architect, played by Jean-Louis? Trintignant, early in his career.

The film is a psychological drama, a film about sexual relationship and sexual tension.

1. The significance of the title? Its symbolism? Comment on the mood of the film. Locations, contribution of colour, musical accompaniment?

2, Comment on the structure of the film: the clear definition into parts, the plan of the film, the geometrical overtones of the inter-relationships?

3. Femininity as central? The emphasis on the two women and their relationship with each other? Psychological, physical? Insight into femininity? The comparison with Paul and masculinity? And the two clowns who eventually are rejected? What insight into masculinity, femininity, sexuality, heterosexuality, homosexuality?

4. Comment on the quality of relationships and possibilities of relationships. How clear was the film on motivation? The obscurities in subconscious motivation? The depth and complexities of motivation in relationships?
Healthy dimensions of relationship? The destructive? The comprehension of relationships and motivation? Paul and his future? Frederic and death? insanity? Was this inevitable?

5. Comment on the films presentation of society. The Paris world, the artist on the pavement? St. Tropez, the house and parties, provincial life etc. An atmosphere for the exploration of relationships and motivation?

6. The focus on Frederic? What kind of woman was she? Initial impressions of sophistication, picking up Why? Rich and sensual? The nature of her liaison with Why? Her power over Why? Why’s power over her? Seducing Paul? her genuine love for him? Growing jealousy? The transformation of her life by relationships? Her drunkenness? The group drunkenness and sexuality? The difference between herself in St. Tropez and Paris? her rejection of the two hangers-on? The irony of her death? What had she achieved in her life? Audience sympathy and
pity for her? An exploration of a contemporary woman?

7. The film's focus on Why? The enigma of her name, the enigma of her personality? Seeing her at work, her art? Why as a doe of the title? Her passivity? Reduced by Frederic, power over her? Her control of the household at St. Tropez? Her caprices, how genuine her love for Paul? Her jealousy? The manifestation of a schizoid personality? The mutual drunkenness? The masturbation at Frederic’s door? The letter? Her final identification with Frederic and her murder of Frederic? The nature of her madness? An adequate exploration of a psychotic character?

8. The character of Paul: an ordinary man, his work, his house? His involvement in the game, liaison with Why, with Frederic? His moving into the household? A sign of contradiction? Hie lack of awareness of Why's emotions? The return to Paris? His return to the house? What would happen to him after the film?

9. The two clowns as a chorus on the behaviour? As spying, the sterility of their presence, their clownishness? The significance of Frederic’s dismissing them?

10. The exploration of love and needs, constructive love, destruction?

11. How well did the technical control of the film combine with the exploration of theme?