One morning Valerie has to tell her unemployed boyfriend Remi that she is pregnant. She has decided to keep the child, but they argue whether they should break up or not. That same day she s... Read allOne morning Valerie has to tell her unemployed boyfriend Remi that she is pregnant. She has decided to keep the child, but they argue whether they should break up or not. That same day she starts working in room service at a smart hotel.One morning Valerie has to tell her unemployed boyfriend Remi that she is pregnant. She has decided to keep the child, but they argue whether they should break up or not. That same day she starts working in room service at a smart hotel.
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- 1 nomination
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe film contains a non-simulated sex scene performed by Catherine Guittoneau and Hervé Gamelin. In an interview, Virginie Ledoyen, who in the scene enters the room where the two are, said:"When I unwittingly walked in on a couple having sex, Benoît Jacquot hadn't warned me what was behind the door. I am not shy at all but very modest. In this scene, I knew I was going to find a couple making love, but I didn't think they would do it for real. At the time, I was really shocked and thought to myself 'They are completely sick, I could have been warned'. "Afterwards, indeed, I thought that if they had pretended, it might have been more funny and anecdotal than anything else. Benoît kept the first take and I certainly wouldn't have had that look, so true, on a repeated take. It's hard to play up the surprise of seeing a couple having sex and looking at the place of their sex because on top of that, he had asked me to fix a point before playing the scene, and it was right on their sex. At the time, I said to myself 'Benoît is a thief, he steals things from me' and, in relation to my pride as an actress, it means that he doesn't believe I'm good enough to be able to play that... But with hindsight, I think that he couldn't have otherwise obtained such a fair look. Because it's a tricky situation: it's not a couple having sex, it's not romantic, it's a couple fucking with filthy faces."
- ConnectionsReferenced in Parole de cinéaste: Benoît Jacquot (2017)
Featured review
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.
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.
Details
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- Country of origin
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- Also known as
- Bir Bekar Kız
- Filming locations
- Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, France(Valerie talks with her mother)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $230,049
- Gross worldwide
- $230,049
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