Having had massive hits in the 70s with Emmanuelle and The Story of O. Jaeckin’s problem was to persuade critics that he was more than just a maker of erotic movies. He followed those hits with two superb but under-appreciated movies, Madame Claude (1977) and The Last Romantic Lover (1978) but critics remained hostile.
Girls represents another change of pace. It’s a quirky coming-of-age story. It follows the assorted misadventures of four girls in Paris.
We realise from the start that the girls might be slightly wild but they’re actually nice girls who are trying to make sense of the grown-up world which they’ve just entered.
Not much happens to the girls, except that everything that matters happens to them. They fall in love. They find out the difference between thinking a guy is cute and being in love with him. They have their hearts broken, and they break a few hearts. They find out what friendship really means.
One really interesting thing is that fatherhood is quite important and fathers are actually portrayed in a positive light.
While there is no thematic or stylistic similarity between the two films Saturday Night Fever’s influence is obvious. That film kicked off a whole genre of movies centred around dance culture. And Girls does have a dance competition and it is very much about nightclub culture.
And John Travolta’s influence is all-pervasive. In Girls all the guys want to be Travolta and all the girls want a boyfriend like Travolta.
Girls is unusual in being a movie about teenagers with an actual teenaged cast, or close to it. The four lead actresses were aged between eighteen and twenty. This helps a lot because it’s important that we don’t judge the girls for the mistakes they make and that’s easier when they actually look like teenagers.
The remarkable thing is that Jaeckin gets such uniformly excellent performances from such inexperienced actresses, but then he always had a knack for getting great performances from women.
The most notable among the young actresses is Anne Parillaud who has gone on to a glittering career.
It’s obvious that Jaeckin (who co-wrote the screenplay) genuinely likes his characters. This is a very warmhearted movie, which won’t surprise anyone who has seen The Last Romantic Lover.
The soundtrack is by Eric Stewart of 10CC and includes their most famous song I’m Not in Love (used very effectively).
Girls doesn’t have the stylistic flamboyance of Jaeckin’s earlier films (a flamboyance which would reassert itself spectacularly in the wonderful Gwendoline in 1984) but it’s a different kind of film. It’s a more intimate film and was made on a very tight budget. What matters is that it captures the youth culture vibe very effectively, and the effervescent energy and craziness of being a teenager.
In the Blu-Ray audio commentary Jeremy Richey argues (convincingly I think) that Just Jaeckin to some extent laid the groundwork for the cinéma du look movement of the 80s. Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva (1981) is usually seen as the beginning of that movement but you can see hints of that approach in all of Jaeckin’s 70s movies. This would also explain some of the critical hostility to his works. Critics complained that the cinéma du look was all style over substance and that’s a criticism often levelled at Jaeckin as well.
Girls is charming and quirky and warmhearted. Highly recommended.
The Cult Epics have released it on Blu-Ray and 4K.
I’ve reviewed most of Jaeckin’s movies including Madame Claude (1977) and The Last Romantic Lover (1978).
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