Trois amies e Babygirl_If these two films — Trois amies and Babygirl — made it into the line-up to legitimize, in the words of Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera, a Festival that found again sexuality as a subject matter to reflect on, well, we must say that once again Europe lags far behind the USA as far as theoretical-political thought goes. they It lags behind in international politics, in innovation, in the awareness of sex’s role as an agent of liberation. The three amies (girlfriends) in Emmanuel Mouret’s film, as well as their men, are nothing more than an elaboration on the great Arthur Schnitzler’s 1903 play Reigen, also known as La Ronde, or round dance (of love). In it, ten characters, each belonging to a different social class, pair up, one couple in each act. One of them will also be one half of a liaison in the following act, until the last one, where the Whore (sic) in the first act meets the Count. Obviously, Mouret adds to the mix the tenets of French love comedy: intrigues, crossings, misunderstandings… but this mix of French légèreté and Austrian inflexibility works only up to a point. Today, there are so many factors that influence this balance, either by weighing it down (Mouret seems to assign to each of the three protagonists a fixed role, one woman destined to romantic and tortured love, one to fatuous and empty liaisons, one to friendly complicity) or by complicating it, like the introduction of an AI algorithm that proves to be right above feelings and affection.
Whatever the case, we are looking at men and women that move about like robots, either following a given path or merely accepting their fate. In this film, love is a foreign entity that might make you happy or turn you to despair, it can give and it can take away, and it spins you around a not-so-merry-go-round where men and women are almost unaware actors.
For the first time in competition at the Venice Film Festival, Emmanuel Mouret crafts a comedy that inherits the expressive codes of the great French tradition of Marivaux and De Laclos while also drawing inspiration from Woody Allen and Éric Rohmer. The story focuses on thre...
A clandestine affair exposes power dynamics capable of overturning everything and everyone. Romy is the CEO of a major company, resolute and authoritative at work, determined to assert her power at every opportunity. The arrival of a young and charismatic intern disrupts both ...
This perspective is completely revolutionized in the American film, the story of a mature female CEO and her intern. The relationship between the two is an experience of play and freedom, and since no activity is more serious than play, the relationship needs rules and consent. The soft femdom dimension the relationship evolves into is, for both, an experience of liberation, of mutual challenge, of satisfaction. Love urges self-strengthening, joy, individual growth. Both protagonists grow into better people. On the other hand, Trois amies is completely different: everything seems to be halted, or if something is moving, it is pushed by external forces, by capricious, distant gods..
The two soundtrack are also quite unlike one another: while in the French film we hear constant recourse to European classical music (Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique, the fantasie from Bizet’s Carmen, classical guitar, Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, and much more), in Reijn’s film, music — by bands we must confess we never heard of — acquires tones of great aggressiveness, of paroxysmal tension.
What follows are not ratings on the music in itself, obviously, but on the music’s ability to partner, devoutly and dependably, to the meaning of each film.
Trois amies
Babygirl
