Review: Good Girl

When Hollywood eventually decides to remake this 2005 French comedy into a Julia Roberts vehicle, I'm sure they will retain the scene in which the indecisive heroine, played by Emmanuelle Devos, swallows the engagement ring her boyfriend has hidden in her cup of yogurt. I doubt, however, that they will include the scene that follows, where the heroine rediscovers the ring in her own shit, and then proceeds to spread the shit out all over the bathroom floor and dig through it with rubber gloves. Some things just beg to be lost in translation. Good Girl, like some other recent French comedies, focuses on the choices of a quirky, Rubenesque female who must run a gauntlet of even quirkier men in the hopes of discovering the bliss of urban couplehood. In this case, the list of suitors includes a mental patient who is also a possible stalker, a scientist who is a potential child molester, and a man who insists that after buying our heroine a cup of tea, he should be able to escort her directly across the street to a hotel. Did I mention the fire-eater? 

Devos plays Fontaine Leglou, an anesthetist who works in the kind of sanatorium that either a) only exists in the movies or b) only exists in the movies and in . It's the kind of place where the doctors and patients are so casual with each other that we can't tell on sight which is which, and sometimes neither can they. It's here that Fontaine meets Phillipe Phillipe (Lambert Wilson), who is both a doctor and a patient in the place, although the film doesn't dwell on this absurdity for too long. ( Wilson is apparently well known to certain American audiences for having a role The Matrix films, but having removed most of that trilogy from my memory, Eternal Sunshine-style, I'm not holding it against him)  He's something of an unstable raconteur in this film, carrying on multiple affairs with hospital staff - presumably they can't resist the way he can almost smoke an entire cigarette with one drag.

Waiting at home for Fontaine is Michel (Bruno Todeschini), her live-in boyfriend who spends much of his time doing unspecified scientific research on the arctic, and who is eager to marry her and start a domestic life. When she walks in on him early in the film and discovers him entertaining a neighbor’s child, she’s alarmed. She begins questioning exactly why he would have this girl over in the first place. Does he have some history that would create instant suspicion in her? Or is this just an example of impenetrable French humor? Not enough of these questions are answered. At the very least, it seems like an odd topic for the director to mine for a domestic squabble. Don’t Parisian couples argue about who is supposed to take out the garbage? Do they typically jump right to ‘Are you molesting the neighbor’s child?’

One of the more interesting scenes in the film comes during a visit to Michel's parents’ house, when Michel's father charms Fontaine with a story about how, having once lost his bearings, he became a bum and lived on the streets for a period of time. It’s a tad unbelievable that he would disclose such a big secret to someone he hardly knows, but the film isn’t too interested with having the plot stand up to hard scrutiny. What we have here is mostly a series of self-contained vignettes, each starring the main character and supposedly adding up to a general picture of her life. Strangely, though, we learn very little about what she actually thinks about the people around her, and her situation. She mostly listens, and processes, instead of staking out her own opinions on things. She takes what people give her.

Fontaine is also noticeably fond of Parisian street entertainment, of the type that Americans would label as tourist-only. She sits for one of those ready-made caricature drawings and stands to watch the performance of a German fire-eater, among other things. (The fire-eater, by the way, seems to have an occupation that’s a little too dangerous for public exhibition. Does he have a permit to blow plumes of flames directly at passersby?) Fontaine’s interests in pursuing basement-level entertainment seem akin to a Manhattan resident shopping for Rolexes on Eighth Avenue or buying CDs and books off of those blankets stretched out in the corners of subway terminals. Maybe it’s just a cultural difference, but it seems hard to believe that an upscale urban professional woman in Paris has those kinds of interests.

The cinematography in the film is somewhat amateurish, which is a big minus when coupled with esoteric humor and a plot that requires close attention to be paid to sort out exactly who is who and what they are up to. Film critics often praise the work of French directors such as Claire Denis, whose films can be difficult to understand on a meaningful level, but who paints pretty pictures for us to look at while we scratch our heads. In this case, all we have is the characters we’re given, and attention must be paid to them if anything is to be salvaged. If you can keep pace with the characters, then how much enjoyment you get out of the film will depend largely on how interested you are in the lifestyle problems of French female thirty-somethings. This is an audience participation film, all the way. With hardly any “story” to fall back on, the director relies heavily on Emmanuelle Devos’ ability to look longingly and convincingly at whatever man she is seated across from at the moment while he stares blankly into space or begs to get down to business. The Fontaines in the audience are expected to fill in the blanks.

*The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening Good Girl as part of its Rendez-vous With French Cinema series. Showtimes are as follows:

Good Girl / Gentille
Sophie Fillières, 2005; 102m
Sun March 12: 1:15 & 6:30; Mon March 13: 3:30