French Twist

French Twist is a french comedy that did big business in America. Watching the film, it is not hard to understand why. The film has many universal hallmarks of comedy in the 90’s while also being more sexually liberal than similar American films of the day. While I commend the film for its sex positivity, not all of French Twist’s humour and general attitude works 25 years after its release.

French Twist is a comedy farce about married couple Laurent and Loli. Laurent cheats on Loli constantly. While Loli knows Laurent has been unfaithful, she doesn’t know the full extent of it. Then, Marijo enters the picture. Marijo is a butch lesbian who Loli initially meets because Marijo’s van has broken down. In a effort to piss her husband off, Loli invites Marijo to spend more and more time with her. Eventually, Loli asks Marijo to move in with them. The two women begin an affair which Laurent is furious about. For several months, the three live together in a tense arrangement while refusing to work through their relationship issues. Things hit a breaking point when one of Marijo’s exes visits her and Loli becomes jealous again. After this, Marijo provides Laurent with an ultimatum: if he impregnates her, she will finally leave them alone, maybe.

The problem I have with lots of European sex comedies, French Twist included is the mixture of juvenile jokes with mature content. There’s a lot of nudity and sex in this movie. But all the jokes surrounding these things are borderline childish. French Twist’s idea of a joke is a man wiggling his penis at a lesbian in an attempt to shock her. The nudity makes this scene R-rated but the level of humour on display is quite juvenile.

As much as I didn’t love the film, French Twist was definitely not as bad as it could have been. It does cross the low bar of having respect and sympathy for its female characters. Because comedies can be so reductive, I do believe it was helpful to have a woman at the helm. It would be far too easy for a film with this plot to disrespect its female characters which French Twist mostly doesn’t. Or, at least, everyone in the movie is equally disrespected regardless of gender.

On the other hand, the film is not as progressive as I’d hoped. I heard that the film featured a bisexual love triangle, sexual fluidity and a poly relationship. And all of this is true and is fairly progressive. However, the framing of this is not always great. Sexist and homophobic slurs are used regularly and characters engage in slut shaming. While none of the characters saying these things are depicted as unproblematic heroes, my issue is that no character really moves past these opinions. Laurent calls Marijo homophobic slurs into the last 20 minutes of the movie and the double standard of Laurent slut shaming his wife for engaging in affairs is never addressed. French Twist does exactly nothing to have its characters or audience learn to be more progressive in their opinions of homosexuality or slut shaming.

What bummed me out about French Twist was we never get to see these characters be happy. I expected over time in the film for Loli, Laurent and Marijo to come to an understanding and end up happy together. That only sort of happens. These three characters are mad and unhappy with each other until the last 10 minutes of the film. Then, we get a time skip and they’ve worked out their problems are are happy. As much as I’m glad they got there eventually, I very much wanted to see more of that journey. In general, I wanted more scenes of these characters not constantly being awful to each other.

French Twist has a good set up for comedy and good energy and pacing. Did it actually make me laugh out loud at any point though? No. I’d still say its set-up is successful enough to not give it an out and out negative review especially because as much as I critiqued the film’s politics, I do think this movie could have been a lot worse and more offensive. As it is, it’s not a comedy I can call timeless but it wasn’t so much of a failure that I became angry at it which is often what happens when I watch bad comedies. Because I didn’t laugh at it but I’m not mad at it either, French Twist receives a middling review from me.

Overall rating: 5.4/10

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