Le Chignon d’Olga (2002)

Le Chignon d’Olga is a French romantic film drama first released in 2002, directed by Jérôme Bonnell.  The film stars Hubert Benhamdine, Nathalie Boutefeu, Florence Loiret, Serge Riaboukine and Marc Citti.  It has also been released under the title: Olga’s Chignon.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Julien, an adolescent with no real aim in life, lives with his sister Emma and father Gilles in a semi-rural area of northern France.  It hasn’t been long since his mother died and a sad cloud hangs over the family home.  Gilles, a writer, struggles to complete a commission for a children’s story.  Emma has broken up with one boyfriend and is unsure about starting a new relationship.  And Julien fantasises about an attractive young woman, Olga, who works in a bookshop, whilst becoming conscious of a growing attraction for his childhood friend, Alice...

Le Chignon d’Olga is a remarkable debut film from Jérôme Bonnell, who was just 23 when he wrote and directed the film.  You almost have to go back to the heady days of the French New Wave to find a filmmaker who has earned, so early in his career, the acclaim that Bonnell has received for this film.  Here is an understated yet thoroughly absorbing little film comprising a series of slice-of-life vignettes which explore the confused love lives of the three protagonists, each of whom is marked by the recent loss of a wife or mother.  

The film combines an engaging emotional realism with a relaxed lightness of touch, evoking something of the early Rohmer, Rivette and Truffaut whilst also offering something new, a sombre undercurrent that subtly hints at darker matters beneath the surface.  It isn’t perfect – some of the acting and direction is a little too self-conscious in a few scenes and some of the comedy goes awry – but such blemishes are easily forgiven and, if anything, add to the film’s rough and ready charm.  If Le Chignon d’Olga is anything to go by, we can expect great things of Jérôme Bonnell.

© James Travers 2008


The only faux pas Jerôme Bonnell made with this beautiful movie was to give it a title that resembles Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee because anything less like watching paint dry (the Rohmer signature) would be hard to imagine.  I was fortunate enough to catch this on its initial release knowing nothing about either the filmmaker or the principal actors. I subsequently learned that Bonnell was a mere 23 years old at the time and several years later I caught his equally facile Waiting for Someone.  

With Le Chignon d’Olga Bonnell offers us a slice of what we might call Chekhov-lite, featuring a dysfunctional family in a rural setting - a family comprising a father, a son and a daughter, all in their different ways grieving the recent death of the mother.  One wonders at how someone so young could devise something so perfect and weave such a complex tapestry around two young people who are the last to learn that they are meant for each other.  A minor masterpiece.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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