MARDI GRAS FILM FESTIVAL: Writer/director Virginie Despentes delivers a sweet, if slight, mature-age love story with Bye Bye Blondie, exhibiting considerable growth as a filmmaker since her maddeningly-overrated debut shocker Baise-Moi (2000). Her new movie’s marketing may play up the more lascivious allure of the lesbian pairing of Emmanuelle Béart and Béatrice Dalle, but the film itself is far more interested in exposing the character’s emotions than their flesh.
The cast commit themselves wholeheartedly
Adapting her own novel (though changing the heterosexual love story to a homosexual one), Despentes gambles by splitting her narrative between 50-something lovers Frances (Béart) and Gloria (Dalle) with time-shifts back and forth to their younger selves, played respectively by Clara Ponsot and Soko. The device has an air of artifice about it; neither story is entirely compelling nor do they particularly reflect upon each other. That both story strands individually run around 45 minutes seems about right, given they basically recount key moments of the love story’s past and present trajectory, but they never quite fully define either the young or old protagonists in their own right.
Frances is a famous television host, but her age is working against her professionally; she keeps her homosexuality closeted and maintains a wafer-thin public facade in the form of a sham marriage to gay writer, Claude (Pascal Greggory). Gloria is a wildfire artist who has never left behind the tempestuous nature of her youthful self; we meet her hurling her lover’s belongings out of their apartment window (not the film’s first cliché). Willing to give their love affair another try, Frances turns up at Gloria’s grungy collective and whisks her back to her penthouse apartment in Paris. Not one to be hidden away, Gloria demands a public profile and their old friction is reignited.
Concurrently, we learn of their early days together. Soko’s Gloria is a punk rocker committed to a mental health facility by her frantic parents; Ponsot’s Frances is already on the inside, feigning chronic amnesia. They bond over weed and the thrill of illicit love before fate separates them. Despentes weaves tragedy and destiny into their scenes, but often stretches credibility. For example, they reunite when Gloria’s punk posse and Frances’ skinhead mates randomly face-off in an alley way scuffle. Perhaps a post-modern nod to Casablanca’s 'Of all the gin joints...’ line, but also a tad hard to swallow nonetheless.
The cast commit themselves wholeheartedly. At times playing beyond their actual years, Béart and Dalle turn on the heat in their bedroom scenes and make for believable soulmates, even when their circumstances don’t seem entirely real. Soko, aka Stéphanie Sokolinski, fires up some early scenes that enliven the film immeasurably (especially the mental meltdown that ultimately puts her away) while the stunning Clara Ponsot (bearing a suitably strong resemblance to a young Béart) brings some warmth to the proceedings at key moments.
The ending may not sit well with audiences expecting deeper insight into mid-life homosexual love, as Despentes foregoes her character’s integrity for an upbeat wrap-up. Veteran DOP Hélène Louvart casts an oddly drab eye over both storylines, though she should be credited with avoiding the handheld shakiness of Despentes’ rape-revenge debut.
