_French Twist_

     One of the promotional images for Josiane Balasho's film prominently
features Victoria Abril's curvy backside. A wireback chair frames her with
an approximate heart shape, leading your eye to her just-below-frame
derriere. She glances right, in profile, and wields a cigar. She looks
demure and seductive, winsome and assertive. 

     The mixed message of Abril's pose is to the point of the film's
schizo affects: it's charming and obnoxious, progressive and retro. This
is French Farce, with a familiar emphasis on sexual appetites and domestic
abuses, all played as broad comedy, and all resolved by film's end (by way
of happy pregnancy), so no one feels bad. The twist is that the movie's
generic sexplay includes lesbianism, which still passes for daring, or at
least somewhat unconventional, subject matter. That said subject matter is
used toward exactly the same end that more typical subject matter might be
used might be understood as some version of social and political progress.
Now jokes made at the expense of a "diesel dyke'' can be as inane as those
jokes made at the expense of a "lunkhead husband.''

     Abril plays a French housewife, Loli. She's feeling confused: she's
beautiful, sexy, a good mother (two kids) but she's also unhappy, sensing
but not quite sure that her husband is sleeping around. Laurent (Alain
Chablat, who is effectively unctuous and annoying) is a real estate agent
who has sex with all of his wealthy female clients. It's not exactly clear
why the women desire the boorish, self-absorbed Laurent, but this is the
film's narrative point of departure: Loli is lonely and Laurent is not. 

     Enter Marijo (played by writer-director Balasko), whose elaborately
painted minivan breaks down near Loli's suburban driveway. Conveniently
and symbolically, Loli's sink has just sprung a leak, and Marijo, being a
truckdriver and a "mannish lesbian'' (she smokes cigars, wears pants and
her hair short) knows how to fix it. When Loli learns that Laurent is
skipping dinner for an evening "meeting,'' she invites Marijo to stay. The
women talk and smoke and laugh, and by the end of the evening they're both
quite smitten with each other. Loli is a bit taken aback by her own
desire, displacing it onto Laurent when he comes home. He's already tired
of course, and resists her advances. 

     It's not long before Laurent, who is evidently much more observant
than his wife, picks up on the women's mutual attraction. The movie then
spends much time observing the results of his anxiety: he can't get it up
with his buxom dates, he gets drunk and complains loudly to his
Fred-Mertz-meets-Tony-Randallish best friend (Ticky Holgado), and he
repeatedly gets up in Marijo's face to have it out "man to man.'' (At one
point when she's outside waiting to speak with Loli, he goes to his
balcony naked, displaying his penis because "it will do her good.'' We're
invited to laugh at his silly guyness.)

     The farce mechanisms kick in hard when the three of them (plus the
prop-kids) decide to live together, with Marijo and Laurent in separate
bedrooms, taking turns sleeping with Loli. She luxuriates in their
fighting over her, but gets jealous when one of Marijo's ex-girlfriends
arrives for a brief visit (Abril has a tough part here: Loli is pretty
stubbornly shallow). What's ultimately tiresome is the glib use of
formula: it appears that a simple change of gender suffices to make a
banal plot look vaguely new but familiar enough to be reassuring.
_Premiere Magazine_ has recently (March 1996) spotlighted Balasko as
someone who might "make French film accessible'' to an apparently
recalcitrant U.S audience (and what about Depardieu? Or Truffaut or
Deneuve for that matter?).  As France's nominee for the Best Foreign Film
Oscar, _French Twist_ is getting media attention, which means it might
even garner an audience beyond "arthouse.''

     That it makes nice with these potential viewers isn't a bad thing.
And there are some good reasons to see this film. Abril does physical
comedy, including elaborate harrumphing and wide-eyed reaction shots, as
well as anyone (see her also in Almodovar's _Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down_) and
Holgado has a great elasti-face. I found myself wishing, though, that the
film would cut loose a little from its "accessible'' generic framework.