With "les biches" ,Chabrol entered his second and most fruitful period:the first one encompassed such classics as "les cousins" and "à double tour" but his formula began to wear thin in the mid -sixties with failures like "l'oeil du malin" "Marie-Chantal contre le docteur Kah" and the abysmal "le scandale".
Stephane Audran ,his then-wife starred in all these movies (roughly 1968-1973)bar two ("la decade prodigieuse" and "docteur popaul") and their spellbinding mysterious atmosphere owes a lot to her.
"Les biches " has not worn that much well though:at the time ,lesbians were not so common in the movies ,and of course they always had a bad end -see also Mark Rydell's "the fox" or William Wyler's "the children's hour"for that matter-.What remains today is not much :only the scene showing Jacqueline Sassard's trying to become the woman she loves by taking her clothes ,her jewels ,her make-up and her voice is still impressive today;what remains falls into the trap of triteness:the man who comes between the two girls ,the chic bourgeois life in Saint-Tropez under the snow,the two would be comic reliefs -who are not funny at all-....
"Les biches" is a must for Chabrol 's fans because it inaugurates his golden era ,which would give such classics as "la femme infidèle" or "le boucher".But the others can easily do without it.
