Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) was a financial disappointment for Claude Charbol, though he considers it his best work of the era. Charbol’s film is dark and gloomy. It has captured the seedy post war texture of Paris in a stark black and white reminiscent of Shirley Clarke or Roberto Rossellini. Such authenticity lends a realistic credibility to the dramatic action, and perhaps even heightens the audiences’ investment.
The narrative centers on four shop girls determined to find good men for husbands despite the fact that, as the film carries on, their motives and aspirations evolve in spite of themselves. It is a film of desperation and romantic frustration, evidenced by one shop girl (played by Clothilde Joano) who allows her desperation to draw her into fatal disaster when she begins dating a sadistic motorcyclist.
The plot of Les Bonnes Femmes speaks as a splendid allegory for the cultural frustrations of France in the early sixties. The rise in political unrest, the new youth movements, an over arching sense of rebellion, etc. all seem to have similar effects on French society as do the romantic quests of the four shop girls. Charbol seems equally as concerned about the course of his nation as he does for the individual at the dawn of the sixties.
