‘My darling little cousin…’
If you were to ask someone to come up with the most stereotypical tropes of French cinema they can think of, they might conjure up an image of sexually liberated young women, people smoking and lots of scenes that take place over a boozy afternoon dinner in a town square somewhere. Well, An Easy Girl has all of that and more. While I’m not clever enough to comment on whether this was a subversion of French cinema, or whether director Rebecca Zlotowski’s tendency to linger just a little too long over shots of her buxom co-lead Zahia Dehar was actually a comment on the male gaze, I did take a lot from this experience, maybe the nagging feeling that I should probably go on holiday…
Naima (Mina Farid) is a typical French teenager. Smoking. Cheese. Philosophical musings. The usual. When her free spirited cousin Sofia (Dehar) comes to stay however, nothing will ever be the same for the two girls again.
An Easy Girl is part bilgrondsuman, part character study about the difference between freedom and repression, and perhaps more importantly, about how the total absence of either only leads to misery. The two female leads do a great job, particularly Dehar who is apparently something of a controversial figure in France but who revels in going full Bond girl here, and Zlotowski does a great job working from her own script (along with Teddy Lussi-Modeste) in capturing the awkwardness/confidence balancing act enjoyed and endured by teenagers since time immemorial.
An interesting film that falls short of greatness whilst still having plenty to say.