Bye Bye Blondie (2012)
Directed by Virginie Despentes

Film Review

Twelve years after she made her directing debut in a blaze of controversy with Baise-moi (2000), Virginie Despentes returns with an altogether different kind of film, a sentimental comedy-drama that tries a little too hard not to cause offence.  For Bye Bye Blondie, Despentes adapts her 2006 novel, replacing the heterosexual main characters with a pair of punk-loving lesbians played by Emmanuelle Béart and Béatrice Dalle, two of French cinema's most sensual actresses.  Compared with Baise-moi, which ended up with an X-certificate after initially being banned by the French government, this latest Despentes offering is a pretty tame affair and is unlikely to shock anyone.  Now considered one of France's leading feminist writers, Virginie Despentes has the confidence to tackle more controversial subjects, but there is precious little sign of that in this film, which lacks the wildly subversive streak which made her first feature so innovative and interesting.

Despentes' attempts to impregnate her film with the spirit of punk rock are generally overdone and unsuccessful, evinced by the chaotic narrative that jumps back and forth between past and present with little thought of creating a coherent whole.  Some generally impressive acting (Soko and Clara Ponsot turn in standout performances as the younger versions of Béart and Dalle) is compromised by the mediocre dialogue, which fails to ring true in just about every scene.  To her credit, Despentes avoids the clichés that abound in lesbian-themed movies, but what she fails to do is to give her characters any depth and reality.  At times, Bye Bye Blondie feels like a punk re-mix of a trashy 1950s middleclass melodrama, confused, mechanical and lacking in genuine human feeling.

Film Synopsis

Gloria and Frances first met in a psychiatric clinic in the 1980s. At the time, they were both young women, barely out of adolescence.  They were struggling to get through the same emotional crises brought on by an unhappy experience in love and overuse of drugs.  They shared the same passion for rock and roll and they enjoyed the closest of friendships.  Afterwards, the two women went their separate ways and now, twenty years on, they live very different lives.  Gloria is now 40 and lives alone, spending her days in a bar in Nancy.  She has neither a job nor a fixed home.  Frances, by contrast, has it made.  She is the host of a popular television show and lives in Paris with her husband Claude Muir, a bestselling author.  To the outside world, Frances and Claude may appear to be the model couple, but the reality is that she prefers to sleep with girls and he with boys.  Frances suddenly gets it into her head to look up her old friend Gloria and rekindle her most intense female relationship...