Les Vierges (1963) - film review

Five young women from very different backgrounds in the 1960s experience their first romantic coupling: Marie Claude flirts with two young men, François and Rémy, but she gives herself to a total stranger at the fairground. Geneviève marries Robert because he shows her great respect.  But when she discovers the nature of physical love on her honeymoon, she is so disgusted that she resolves to avoid any physical contact... Christine is engaged to Xavier, an idiotic nobleman.  She convinces him that, to advance her career, she gave herself to her employer.  In fact, she had spent the night with a painter with whom she had fallen in love.  Sophie loves and is loved by Mickey, a young plumber.  Together, they look for a place where they can play the games of love, but in vain... Nora is in love with her manager, Berthet, a forty year-old married man.  Berthet loves her too but he refuses to consummate his love until he is divorced.  Nora thinks that her virginity is the problem, so she allows a colleague to lure her into bed.  When Berthet hears about this he decides to leave her...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

The fourth movie by film director Jean-Paul Mokiejewski, better known as Jean-Pierre Mocky, came out on 22 May 1963.  Entitled Les Vierges, it is a Franco-Italian comedy of manners which explores the relationships of the young generation in the 1960s. Mocky depicts, with his characteristic dark humour, five portraits of young girls discovering physical love for the first time.  As the title suggests, it is a paradoxical and also surprisingly poetic film.

After his delightful farce Les Snobs (1961), Jean-Pierre Mocky returned to amorous relationships with this delicious exploration of the female psyche.  It is in some ways a companion piece to his 1959 film Les Drageurs, which covered similar territory, from a male angle. Les Vierges is more than a film; it is an interesting and almost surreal presentation of the pro-1968 mentality.  Through five situations that are both cruel and tender, funny and sad, we are reminded of the inequalities that prevailed in the mid-1960s through simple-minded male chauvinism.  The film’s morale is self-evident: how can young men pursue multiple relationships but expect to find a pure woman for marriage?  The era depicted in the film came to an end in 1967 with the Neuwirth law, which legalized birth control methods in France for the first time.

The four leading female roles are authentically played by unknown young actresses carefully chosen by the filmmaker himself.  The cast also includes several familiar faces from Mocky’s films (Charles Aznavour, Gérard Blain, Francis Blanche and Jean Poiret).  Last but not least, there is the radiant Italian actress Stefania Sandrelli, who was first seen in Pietro Germi’s 1961 film Divorce à l’Italienne with Marcello Mastroianni.  After several successful Italian productions, Sandrelli was noticed in French movies such as Jean-Pierre Melville’s L’Ainé des ferchaux (1963) and Tendre voyou (1966), both with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and also Alain Corneau’s Police python 357 (1976) with Yves Montand.  Don’t miss this surprising and exhilarating film, now available on DVD.

© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium) 2012

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