{"id":2971,"date":"2016-03-05T11:20:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T16:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=2971"},"modified":"2026-10-21T14:47:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T18:47:48","slug":"the-new-girlfriend-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=2971","title":{"rendered":"The New Girlfriend-2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Girlfriend-2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director Francois Ozon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starring Romain Duris, Anais Demoustier<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scott’s Review #382<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"80017300\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reviewed March 5, 2016<\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New Girlfriend (2015) is a French and lighter version of The Danish Girl, a similarly themed film also released in 2015.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

Sadly, we learn that Laura has recently died of a terminal illness, and this is where the film begins.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We mostly see the bond develop between Claire and David, who is sometimes Virginia and sometimes David.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This makes the film more character-driven.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This film is French, so the nudity is tasteful and even beautiful.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The ending slightly disappointed me.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

The film chose not to go this route, and it undoubtedly would have made the film darker and given it a much deeper story.<\/p>\n

Instead, The New Girlfriend (2015) was light, fun, and wholesome overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading The New Girlfriend-2015<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240,192,11874,442,35,213,339,122,331],"tags":[5377,5375,5378,5376],"class_list":["post-2971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-movie-reviews","category-dramas","category-erotic","category-french-films","category-foreignfilms","category-foreign-dramas","category-lgbt-dramas","category-gay-films","category-lgbt-foreign-language-films","tag-anais-demoustier","tag-francois-ozon","tag-raphael-personnaz","tag-romain-duris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24886,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions\/24886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}