women on the verge of living freely
by Douglas Messerli
Albert Dieudonné (screenwriter, based on the
novel by Victor Margueritte), Jean de Limur (director) La
Garçonne [aka The Flapper and The Tomboy] / 1936 [DVD in
French only]
This film begins with an innocuous tennis game
as the young, emancipated French woman, Monique Lerbier (Marie Bell) flirts
with her male companions and behaves very much like a young girl with her full
future ahead of her. However, her parents have other plans for her, suggesting
a marriage of convenience to man she does not love.
Even
then, Monique is willing to go through with the marriage until she realizes
that her fiancé is leading a double life and is in a relationship with another
woman. Disgusted and humiliated, she refuses to continue on with the charade,
and escapes, determined to leave him and live freely.
She
begins by running an antique shop. However, when she meets the chanteuse (Edith
Piaf) (who sings the memorable Quand même), she is gradually drawn into
a lesbian affair, which quickly grows into experimentation with sex in general
and the use of drugs. At one point in the film, she enters a room filled with
opium users and imbibes in the drug.
The film—previously released to great
scandal and censorship in a 1923 film directed by Armand du Plessy—spends a
great deal of time putting its women on display in grand decadent lesbian
parties as Monique explores her sexuality. The film also features the famed
actor Arletty in the role of Niquette.
For
all its seemingly scandalous subject matter for 1936, at a time in which the
Hays Board had excised homosexuality of any sort from US cinema, the film ends
in manner in which even Joseph Breen might have approved, as Monique begins to
perceive that her new life is no longer appealing to her. Falling in love with
a man, she leaves her previous world behind and enters into a traditional
heterosexual relationship. Whether or not she has learned anything positive
from her semi-feminist explorations, is not established at film’s end.
Los Angeles, July 14, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July
2023).
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