La desenchantee

Judith Godreche in La Desenchantee

Benoit Jacquot's La desenchantee, from 1990, is an intermittently successful portrait of a teenage Parisian making a difficult transition from childhood to womanhood. Beth is finishing school while caring for her younger brother and invalid mother. The family is living a hand to mouth existence dependent on the largesse of an older doctor, unsubtly called "Sugardad", who has designs on Beth. Beth has a more age appropriate boyfriend, but he shows himself to be an insensitive creep who flippantly suggests she take on an older, uglier lover to prove their own love is real. This throws Beth for a loop and she considers hooking up with a callow nerd and a thoughtful, but tormented older man. 

Jacquot conveys the confusion of youth where identities are tried on like hats to find the proper fit. Lead Judith Godreche is not as strong as Virginie Ledoyen in Jacquot's later A Single Girl, but her blankness fits her character's confusion. Some of the characters, like Beth's Mom, do not rise above cliché, but Ivan Desny provides effective notes of ambivalence as the sinister Sugardad. Jacquot, as in A Single Girl, conveys the menacingly lupine nature of his males. He also winningly portrays his heroine's cultural strivings, such as her interest in Rimbaud and Egyptian sculpture, as brief moments of transcendence in a dog eat dog culture. La Desenchantee is fitful and occasionally overbearing, but it succeeds in evoking its heroine's plight.