Unknown filmmaker | The French Exchange — Renault Clio: Thirty Years in the Making / 2019

women in love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker The French Exchange — Renault Clio: Thirty Years in the Making / 2019 [2 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

In 2019 Renault Clio made an ad aimed at lesbians, what might almost be described as a lesbian melodrama. It begins with a British mother driving a young unhappy and somewhat frightened girl in her Renault Clio to the bus which takes her to a exchange summer in France.

    There she meets up with a girl of her age and they become close, and by the time they return  home have become close friends, sleepy heads against each other’s shoulders, and a hug as they leave one another’s company at the shuttle.

      In the next scene they have grown into teenagers, and still have a close relationship, going for a swim together in the ocean and kissing one another in a rather steamy teenage love scene. 

        Every time they meet up, of course, they travel by Renault Clios, each time in a different color.

      But finally, there seems to be a confrontation between one of the girls and her father (one article explains he has read one of the love letters exchanged with her girlfriend), and in the next frame she is being married to a man, with her English friend in attendance, as the bride sadly looks back over her shoulder at her former close friend.

    In the next frame, she is packing up her things, obviously leaving her husband, filling up the truck of her Clio and driving off to the shuttle which takes her back to her English girlfriend, the two hugging and driving off in a brand new red Clio.

    In the last scene, they return to as an adult couple with girls of their own to visit the British girl’s parents.

    The musical accompaniment here is a piano version of Oasis' "Wonderwall," with a female vocal. And although the director is unnamed, the film was made by the Publicus-Poke advertising firm.

 

Los Angeles, December 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).