Just so...so bad

An unexpected masterpiece

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

It is good thing Ledoyen is a seriously babe-a-licious hottie because she fills up every frame of this tedious and uneventful nonstory. In "A Single Girl", the camera follows Valérie (Ledoyen) around in real time, dogging her as she walks and walks and works and talks and walks and works and smokes and talks and works some more. This exercise in pure voyeurism shows us Valérie as she sits in a cafe telling her boyfriend she's pregnant. It shows her going to her new job as a room service waitress in a hotel...no cutaways, no fast forwards; just a continuum - every step she takes, down the street, around the corner, etc. We watch her put on her uniform and begin work...etc. On and on until about the 1:25 mark when we cut to a new day and Valérie, whose child is now a toddler, as she's talking with her mom in a park. Shortly thereafter the film ends. No story, just voyeurism. For what it is, it is very well done. Sound good? If so, watch it. If not, don't. (C+)

Valerie tells her boyfriend she's pregnant, he's not sure what he wants. She's mad, but hoping he'll somehow turn around. The unsettled uncertain back and forth is very real. She seems better than the boyfriend, but doesn't quite know it. Then off to work at a new job in a hotel. Rhythm varies with the headlong speedy movement of work and occasional moments grabbed for a nap or a smoke. Tensions with staff and guests make you worry about this young girl: any situation could explode. She seems calm outwardly, but you gradually get a sense of the roiling interior. Will she crack under the pressure? Mysteries--why is she so cold to the black co-worker? Racism? Worry? You're not quite sure. At moments things loosen up, the girl shows attitude to the point you think she might get fired. Can she be that tough, that self-confident? In a way, yes. She turns out to be an amazing character who almost thinks she's ordinary, though she knows the men are after her like a pack of wolves. She's young, you worry for her, but she can take care of herself. In the end she seems awesomely, unfathomably self-sufficient.This movie seems to be about female power. A good pairing would be with Sautet's A Simple Story, about an older woman also outwardly ordinary (though beautiful) but with amazing contained power, a kind of integrity beyond any men she encounters.

I picked up "La Fille seule" ("A Single Girl"; French, 1995, with English subtitles) on video tonight and just finished watching it with a friend of mine. Neither of us really understood what the film was about or what its message was.Nominally, the film shows a morning in the life of Valérie (Virginie Ledoyen), a woman probably in her early 20s, and her having to tell her unemployed and uninspiring boyfriend, Rémi (Benoît Magimel), that she is pregnant. It is also the first day of work for her, after being unemployed for a year or so. Much of the elapsed time depicted in the film is on the job - she works delivering room service meals to guests at a fancy hotel in Paris. The story is revealed in real time - when Valérie walks, we follow her until she gets where she is going, and then continue our almost voyeuristic tailgating of her. The shooting gives an impression of hand-held filming.I enjoyed the concept of showing life as it is with time neither compressed nor played backwards or forwards. We see all of Valérie's morning - her walks down long corridors and rides up and down the hotel elevators delivering food, her signing of her employment contract, her washing her hands in a bathroom - everything. However, this becomes a bit monotonous - which could have been the director's goal - and I found myself imagining scene transitions and cuts to integrate the story's meaningful montages and leave out irrelevant trivia.I didn't really understand what message we're supposed to glean. Valérie is surprisingly bereft of much emotion in most of the film; is "A Single Girl" a simple tale of the possibly mindless dehumanization some work can inflict on us? A depiction of monotony of real life? I don't think so. Maybe just an experimental play with time? That could be, but it could have been much more clever and interesting.

As John Lennon once wrote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."This is a very simple film, and that simplicity gives it an extraordinary beauty. And speaking of "extraordinary beauty," Virginie Ledoyen is a revelation, a young Isabelle Adjani in the making.Ledoyen plays Valerie, a young French girl who one morning meets her boyfriend in cafe, argues with him, then runs off to a hotel a couple blocks away to begin a new job. Her new co-workers greet her in the manner co-workers always greet a newcomer: some with welcome arms and others with contempt. When Valerie gets a break and runs back to the cafe to finish the argument with her boyfriend, we feel every tick of the clock. We know she is taking too long on the break and has got to get back!But everything that happens to Valerie is so very real and so very urgent because the film is shot in real time. This was a daring attempt by the director, Benoit Jacquot, but his gamble hits the bullseye. Of course, with Virginie Ledoyen to follow around with his camera, Jacquot could hardly go wrong.