I can't think of a more bourgeois movie than Eric Rohmer's Boyfriends and Girlfriends—in French L'Ami de mon amie. ("The Friend of my Boyfriend") It tells the story of two young men and three young women—educated, mid-level bureaucrats—who search for love in a chic but ultra-modern suburb near Paris, France.
The movie has no minority characters, never mentions the suffering of the poor, Gay rights, nor tips its hat to heroic women telling off sexist bosses. For its oversight, Boyfriends and Girlfriends and its director Eric Rohmer received many negative reviews in the U.S. I found the movie entertaining and engaging, but if a film does not actively connect to the liberal Zeitgeist, it will draw criticism for its temerity. Here are a few examples of the criticism:
- Jeffrey M. Anderson of the film web-site Combustible Celluloid describes the movie as "an intelligent movie about shallow people".
- Hal Hinson of the Washington Post writes, "Its an utterly supericial movie—a celebration of superficiality—and utterly charming."
- The film web-site DVD Beaver writes, "The characters in Boyfriends and Girlfriends are all self-centered and shallow."
The Plot→
Two young women, Blanche and Léa, strike up a conversation when they share a table during lunch in an office canteen, where they work. Léa is tall, strikingly Latin, and opinionated. Blanche is pale, shy, and self-effacing, but it turns out that Léa cannot swim; so Blanche offers to teach her. In the pool, the women show a different side of their characters: Blanche is athletic and swims like a pro. Léa behaves like an insecure little girl, charming and guileless.
Léa has a live-in boyfriend Fabian, but the way she talks about him, she can hardly wait to get of him. The viewer suspects that her complaints about Fabian boil down to his blind-love making him unable to see her real feelings toward him.
Blanche, meanwhile, meets Fabian and his tall, handsome friend Alexandre, who comes off as an opinionated, demanding executive-type. Blanche likes his decisive, headstrong masculinity; but he can hardly tolerate the gentle, hesitant Blanche and walks away from her in disgust. She goes home in tears.
When Léa goes out of town (to see another boy, presumably) she suggests that Blanche go out with Fabian. They spend the day together swimming and talk into the night. Gradually, they realize they like each other a lot and end up spending the night at Blanche's flat. Afterward, they worry like hell that Léa will find out. But Léa and Alexandre realize they have "found" each other—each liking the other's outspokenness and decisiveness.
I have seen perhaps a dozen YouTube videos of Boyfriends and Girlfriends. In the above photo, one YouTuber takes notes of the coordinated, Summer fashions that the girls choose. The movie really reveals the dream young people, that they can afford nice clothes, sit down at a table next to someone friendly, and gain a new circle of friends—perhaps marrying one of them.
Americans need to understand the hostility of the Left for this kind of exclusive, personal scenario, as part of its effort to abolish private spaces. I can still remember the scene in the film Dr. Zhivago when Communist partisans capture Yuri Zhivago and bring him to the Commander Strelnikov, a ruthless, committed Bolshevik.
Yuri knows Commander Strelnikov already. He is also having an affair with Strelnikov's estranged wife Lara. If the Commander knows about the affair, it doesn't appear to bother him, although he is stiff and hostile to Yuri throughout the interview. He tells Yuri, "The private life in Russia is dead. History has killed it."
The Reverend Jim Jones, another Marxist, also believed that the private life is dead. One of Jones's followers said that Jim Jones told his followers that they should live to serve others, and that sexual relationships were selfish because they create a private space.
Spokesmen for the Left reflexively shake their heads when anyone tries to pin them down on their intentions toward the rest of us. Judging by the leftist bloggers who post on Facebook, I only hope that they won't feed us to killer whales.