Les Coquillettes

Created coincidentally and without knowledge of Lena Dunham’s Girls, Writer/Director Sophie Letourneur’s Les Coquillettes (Macaroni and Cheese) is the French version of contemporary single women.

 

The story concerns three horny 30-something women (Director Sophie Letourneur and newcomers Camille Genaud and Carole Le Page), who are attending a film festival in which Sophie has a film and at which all of them are hoping to get laid.

 

 

French films usually show how more sophisticated they are in matters of relationship, especially those of a sexual nature.  Here, it was both refreshing and, yet, sad to see how closely they resemble their contemporaries on this side of the Atlantic.

 

 

The film unfolds in flashback as the women sit around a Paris apartment relating their memories of the festival as we see what really happened.

Letourneur actually shot most of the film at the Locarno Festival at which a short film of hers was being shown.  Her work is artfully done and I look forward to seeing more of her work in the future.  And, I look forward to seeing her friends continuing to perform, as well.



The men, however, don’t live up to the stereotypical version of the suave French male and I can’t help feeling that is a tragedy, if true.

I saw the American premier of the film at the New Directors/New Films Festival and it doesn’t, currently, have a U.S. distributor, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to see it.  That would be a shame, so I hope it is picked up.

 I give Les Coquillettes a 3+ out of 5.