Les Novices (1970)
Directed by Guy Casaril, Claude Chabrol

Film Review

By the late 1960s, Brigitte Bardot's star, which had shone so brightly at the start of the decade, was well and truly on the wane.  Her dwindling popularity with the public and a series of catastrophic box office failures, coupled with recurring personal difficulties, meant that she was no longer box office dynamite and, as a result, offers of work were becoming scarce and increasingly exploitative.   Les Novices was the kind of film that the actress would probably not even have considered in her glory days, a lightweight sex comedy that paired her off with another star of French cinema, one whose career was very much in the ascendant: Annie Girardot.  Not yet ready to step out of the limelight altogether, Bardot allowed herself to be talked into accepting the lead in Les Novices, unaware, or perhaps not even caring, that it would further hasten her impending departure from the big screen.

Les Novices is one of those amiable but not particularly bright mainstream comedies that came to dominate French cinema in the 1970s, in most cases given a thin veneer of respectability by having a prominent star like Louis de Funès or Jean-Paul Belmondo take the lead role.  By partnering Bardot with Girardot, the film's producers were hoping to repeat the success of Louis Malle's Viva Maria! (1965), in which Bardot had formed a sublime double act with Jeanne Moreau.  Had Les Novices been directed by someone of Malle's calibre it might conceivably have worked and ended up being more than just a series of lewd, loosely cobbled together sketches.  Unfortunately, the problems of a mediocre script were compounded by a director, Guy Casaril, who lacked experience and imagination.  Casaril made such a bad job of directing the film that in the end he was replaced by Claude Chabrol, who failed to salvage the film and refused to allow his name to appear on the credits.

Despite the multiple failings on the scripting and directing fronts, Les Novices still retains a certain charm and just about passes for entertainment, redeemed in part by the spirited contributions from its two indefatigable lead actresses.  Both Bardot and Girardot must have known they were trying to bail out a sinking ship but they do their best to conceal the fact and give the film everything they have, extracting laughs from even the most crass and badly constructed of comic situations.  It is almost worth the cost of the cinema ticket for the one memorable scene in which Girardot, playing an experienced prostitute, teaches the green-as-a-cucumber Bardot the art of her trade - it is vaguely reminiscent of the saucy Bardot-Moreau stage act in Malle's film, and just as wickedly funny.  Not surprisingly, the critics generally loathed the film and audiences shunned it, hammering yet one more nail into the coffin of Bardot's short but dazzling acting career.

Film Synopsis

Sister Agnès has become so bored with her life in a convent that she decides to run away to Paris.  Whilst looking in vain for a job, she meets Mona Lisa, a kind-hearted prostitute who invites her to share her way of life.  Through her new friend's tutelage, Agnès learns all the secrets of her new profession, but one problem leads to another and Agnès ends up looking for more suitable work.  One day, she finds it as an ambulance driver.  Agnès and Mona Lisa take advantage of the situation by using the ambulance in their prostitution racket.  Very soon, the two woman have the police running after them, and they end up seeking sanctuary in the last place they expected...