Tag: Romain Duris

Review by Stephen Jones

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND is the sort of middle-brow, forgettable movie you’d stumble upon while watching Showtime in the mid 90’s. It has what it views as a tantalizing hook, seems to know very little about it, but thinks that knowing about it at all is enough. With the movie’s particular hook, cross-dressing, that probably WOULD have been enough in the mid 90s. But that was 20 years ago.

I’m not really in a position to delve into a movie from the perspective of trans issues. It’s not an experience I know well enough to speak from. But the main characters agreeing that “gay is less embarrassing than tranny” even had me cringe a little. This isn’t a movie I’d throw under the “transphobic” label, because in the end it seems to be on the side of David/Virginia being alright after all, but it felt like it came to that conclusion in the same way as Michael Scott from “The Office.” I think its heart is in the right place, but it’s really dumb.

Not that it knows that. The whole time it felt like the movie didn’t realize that it was holding any risque ideas it had at arms length. It addresses cross dressing, transgender issues, homosexuality, pretty much every key frame on the LGBT spectrum. But it always feels like an upper middle class housewife getting a thrill by going into the part of town next to the seedy part of town. It could have worked. It fits the perspective of the main character, which isn’t invalid, but it never actually tackles any issues or conflict that might arise. Any resolution comes through the same sort of cheap melodrama that could come from any other movie, completely disconnected from who the characters are or what the movie has been about. And when they do try to connect it to the story, it’s done in the absolute stupidest way possible.

The movie needed to be either in much better hands or much worse. Someone along the lines of Michael Haneke could’ve made something genuinely interesting and thought provoking with the same material. On the opposite end, someone much less competent could have made a much more entertaining movie, sort of a contemporary “Glen or Glenda.” What director Francois Ozon has given us isn’t smartly written or artfully directed enough to be great, or even really good, but too competently made on all other fronts to be memorably or entertainingly bad. What’s left is a mediocre vapor of a movie about a decade and a half too late to have any lasting status. I’m already starting to forget it.

2 of 5 Stars

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND opens in St. Louis September 24th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater