Film Review
Leontine Sagan's
Mädchen in
Uniform (1931) appears to have been the main inspiration for
this contrived melodrama set in a girls' boarding school, the last film
that the Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst directed in France before
returning to Nazi Germany in 1938.
Jeunes filles en détresse is
a competently realised production (more typical of Hollywood than
French cinema of the period) but it lacks the inspired touch that Pabst
brought to his previous films and is scarcely recognisable as the work
of one of Europe's leading cineastes. The film's Achilles heel is
its banal plot that deals a tad superficially with one of
the most important social concerns of the day, namely the neglect of
children by parents too preoccupied with their careers and other
interests. Instead of a mordant satire with a cogent moral, what
Pabst delivers is little more than a charming and slightly saccharine
crowd-pleaser that scarcely tickles the conscience.
If Pabst's direction is moderately below par, the same cannot be said
of the performances from the predominantly young female cast.
Most impressive of all is a sprightly 16-year-old who dazzles in her
first major screen role (having made her film debut the previous year)
- Micheline Chassagne, here credited for the first time under her
"borrowed" name Micheline Presle (taken from the character she plays in
this film). With seemingly unbounded charm and energy, Presle
lights up the film, just as she would in
so many films as one of France's biggest stars in the following
decade. The actress even gets to lead a sing-song, although her vocal talents
are somewhat wasted on a toe-curling anti-divorce number that would
be better suited for Shirley Temple.
Another instant eye-catcher is Louise Carletti, another
immensely talented young actress who had something of Presle's star
power but sadly never matched her success, despite appearing in some
notable films in the 1940s. Presle and Carletti have no
difficulty eclipsing the more mature members of the cast (even actors
as capable as André Luguet and Marcelle Chantal) but they meet
their match in a wonderfully tyrannical Marguerite Moreno, who very
nearly steals the film with another of her great comic harridan
portrayals. In the film's showdown, Moreno comes dangerously
close to being driven into a swimming pool by her mutinous charges - but
somehow (tragically) this
passage à l'acte went unpassed.
Jeunes filles en
détresse hardly rates as a classic but, thanks to its
lively performances, it makes a highly enjoyable timewaster.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Georg Wilhelm Pabst film:
L'Esclave blanche (1939)
Film Synopsis
Jacques and Marthe Presle are too preoccupied with their respective
careers - he is a divorce lawyer, she a busy surgeon - to devote much
time to their teenage daughter Jacqueline. Fearing they are
neglecting their child, the couple finally decide to place her in a
girls' boarding school run by the formidable Madame Vuilliard.
Here, Jacqueline Presle soon strikes up a friendship with her roommate
Margot and quickly discovers that most of her fellow boarders are the
offspring of divorced parents. Encouraged by her new friends,
Jacqueline hastily sets about creating a league to outlaw
divorce. She does not yet know that her own parents' marriage is
threatened when her father begins an affair with a famous actress, who
happens to be Margot's mother...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.