Les Bonnes Femmes

After the film's 1966 New York opening, Robert Alden of the New York Times found Chabrol's symbolism "overdone", but lauded the cinematography and performances, concluding that Les bonnes femmes was not a perfect, but "worthwhile" film which "deserves more recognition than it has had."^[5]

In 1999, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader titled Les bonnes femmes "the best as well as the most disturbing" of Chabrol's films so far, reading the film's murder scene as a precursor to the climactic scene in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz.^[2] Upon the 2000 Los Angeles re-release, the Los Angeles Times reviewer saw "a sensitive study of character" and "one of his [Chabrol's] most individual—and most satisfying—works."^[3]

In the UK, critic Geoff Andrew rated the film "an ironic, witty study of human foibles" which "remains emotionally affecting thanks to Chabrol's unsentimental compassion for his subjects."^[6] Writing in The Guardian, David Thomson called it "one of Chabrol's best films, in which the four shopgirls he observes are all versions of the Emma Bovary dream. It's a great movie just because the people seem so ordinary and their lives so trivial."^[7]

In their 2011 list of "essential" Chabrol films, Indiewire described Les bonnes femmes as "a simultaneously heartbreaking and chillingly dark piece," and added that "the cruel world he [Chabrol] depicts... is a man's world, and women are just passing time in it."^[4]

• Les Bonnes Femmes at IMDb