The New Girlfriend-2015

Director Francois Ozon

Starring Romain Duris, Anais Demoustier

Scott’s Review #382

Reviewed March 5, 2016

Grade: B

The New Girlfriend (2015) is a French and lighter version of The Danish Girl, a similarly themed film also released in 2015.

The story follows the central character’s gender-identity confusion; though The Danish Girl is set in the 1920s, The New Girl is set in the present day.

The film begins with a brief montage of two best friends, Laura and Claire, inseparable as children, young adults, and even as married women.

Sadly, we learn that Laura has recently died of a terminal illness, and this is where the film begins.

Claire begins a unique friendship with Laura’s husband, David, when she catches him wearing women’s clothing and acting like a “mommy” to his infant daughter.

They form a bond, and Claire agrees to keep David’s secret and even accompany him in public as he slowly takes on the persona of “Virginia.”

I found the film quite compelling throughout most of the running time as we see David’s burning desire to dress as a woman and feel like a woman.

We mostly see the bond develop between Claire and David, who is sometimes Virginia and sometimes David.

Claire is happily married to her successful, handsome husband, Gilles, and the three individuals are friends. They share dinners, tennis matches, and evenings consuming wine.

Gilles is unaware of David’s secret and begins to fear an affair between his wife and friend. Likewise, Claire sometimes imagines David and Gilles beginning a torrid affair.

Interestingly, the film does not go full steam ahead with the love triangle between Claire/Gilles/David (Virginia), a wise choice. That would have made the film more typical and perhaps even one-note.

Rather, the point is David’s struggle to feel like a woman and how his friends support him. When he kisses Claire and snuggles with her, it is not sexual; it is to feel close to another woman.

This makes the film more character-driven.

As with many foreign-language films, The New Girlfriend is liberal with male and female nudity. When nudity is featured in American films, typically it is gratuitous or sexual.

This film is French, so the nudity is tasteful and even beautiful.

When Claire is topless, it is more expressive of the mystique of the female body than in a showing of a chesty woman, which Claire is not.

The ending slightly disappointed me.

The idyllic, fairy-tale ending felt romanticized and unrealistic. I would have liked to have seen more of David/Virginia’s struggles and how his in-laws might have wrestled with their granddaughter being raised by a single man dressing as a woman.

Another flaw was the lack of explanation as to whether David, as a male, desired and yearned biologically to become a woman or if he was satisfied to dress up and publicly look like a woman.

The film chose not to go this route, and it undoubtedly would have made the film darker and given it a much deeper story.

Instead, The New Girlfriend (2015) was light, fun, and wholesome overall.