Looking For Cheyenne

The first five minutes of Looking For Cheyenne feature nudity, bisexuality, smoking and considering suicide because of a breakup. I try not to stereotype nations or national cinema, but this is one of the most classically French movies of all time. All comes second to romantic and sexual passion in Looking For Cheyenne.

After being laid off from her job, Cheyenne breaks up with her girlfriend and moves to a rural location. Her girlfriend, Sonia is pretty upset by this. Sonia sleeps with a man named Pierre out of spite but that doesn’t stop her suicidal thoughts of a life without Cheyenne. Pierre’s response to their night together is to plan a whole future involving moving in with Sonia and starting a family. Instead, Sonia finds another seemingly sympathetic ear, a woman named Beatrice. Turns out, Beatrice is an emotional sadist who wants Sonia to fall for her so that Beatrice can emotionally destroy her. With such bizarre rebounds, perhaps it makes sense that through all of this, Sonia pines desperately for Cheyenne and tries to win her back.

Dysfunctional passion is the name of the game in Looking for Cheyenne. So much so that characters are able to communicate either directly with the audience or telepathically to other characters, so long as doing so would create a heightened emotional state. You gotta respect a movie that knows what it is. Looking for Cheyenne is a movie about passionate bisexual dysfunction. It wastes no time getting there and employs techniques such as fourth wall breaking to get itself there directly and without wasting a minute. You’d be surprised how much dysfunction the film packs into its under 90 minute runtime. Director Valérie Minetto seems to know exactly what she’s about.

While I respect the movie’s solid sense of identity, this still isn’t the most fresh storyline I’ve seen. Some of the presentation of it is somewhat new but again, a lot of the film feels almost stereotypically French cinema. It’s about attractive people willing to do nudity who have sex with other people of multiple genders. And all the romance and sexuality also leads to extraordinarily heightened emotional states. Yeah, I’ve seen this one before. A few times, actually. The French are by far, the best at this. As a national cinema, France explores sex and prioritizes it in many stories in a way other countries do not. If you want a film that explores a sexual relationship and does so with minimal judgment, you probably go French. Seems like a lot of the time, issues of morality or whatever don’t manner so long as the sexual chemistry is electric.

I respect a film that knows what it is. Everything in Looking for Cheyenne feels deliberate even while the characters are making absurd choices and having unhinged emotional responses. But in the fullness of time, I’m going to remember Looking for Cheyenne less as an individual story and more a film that makes up the tapestry of French cinema. It is for better and worse, a product of its national cinema. And it’s a product I’ve seen more than once before.

Overall rating: 5.7/10

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