The Beguines

I found out there is an audience for The Beguines. An audience of queer women, even! Though I really cannot count myself among them. The Beguines is a pretty big movie for sapphics in the “coquette” community. And I wish I could tell you the appeal of this movie is simply routed in a love of vintage French fashion. That’s part of the appeal. The rest of it is that this movie is about a 15 year old girl engaging in a relationship with a 38 year old woman. I’m not young enough, nor do I have enough mommy issues to find The Beguines anything other than icky.

Not content with depicting just your entry-level problematic relationship between a teen and an adult, The Beguines adds an additional layer of power dynamics and abuse to this. There’s hardly a time in this relationship when young Helen isn’t either physically abused or overtly manipulated by Tamara. Is there an additional element of BDSM domination to what Tamara does? You bet! Poor Helen. Naive and without a mother in her life and it’s her misfortune that she’s in a narrative where absolutely everyone sexualizes her. Did I mention that Tamara is her father’s mistress? This movie is almost a stereotype of a French erotic drama. Because yeah, of course this story of underage abuse is erotic.

That’s obviously my main problem with the film. It presents this story as sexy. It’s not even that the film doesn’t see the problem with it. Tamara is clearly meant to be abusive and quite a horrible person. We’re meant to see this relationship as very unhealthy for Helen. But we’re also supposed to find it hot when they get naked and have sex. That’s not a duality of thoughts I can keep manage. I’m trying so hard not to moralize and keep this about personal feelings. The way The Beguines presents this story made me feel gross. Especially in a year where I’ve watched Priscilla and May December. I’ve seen recent examples of how you can tell a story about this sort of underage relationship without sexualizing it. But that’s not what The Beguines is there to do. The Beguines is there to be sexy.

It made a lot of sense when I realized that this director, Guy Casaril also did Emilienne. That movie was also about sexualizing toxic sapphic relationships. But at least everyone in Emilienne was an adult! I must admit that there is an innate sense of style to Casril’s work. On the aesthetic level, I’m not surprised it’s a hit in certain online communities. It’s not just about the lesbian Lolita stuff for them. Nobody’s out here making moodboards of Lesbian August. Because Lesbian August looks like shit. Meanwhile, The Beguines is stylish, a little glamorous and shot on a half-decent film stock.

Between this and Emilienne, Casaril likes a toxic relationship. Which isn’t honestly the worst idea for an erotic drama. It’s at least something. An interest in exploring some sort of relationship dynamic. And that is true about The Beguines. On some level, any amount of character exploration does put this movie a little above lots of other vintage erotic dramas. But the character work in this is just too thin in The Beguines for me to champion it. The film is based on a novel written by a 19 year-old girl. So it actually has a decent framework to work off of. I think all of the bits of this movie that do have depth are because of that original story, as opposed to anything that screenwriter and director Guy Casaril added. What Guy Casaril added was nude scenes.

It really does come down to the distinct disconnect between the mood The Beguines wanted to provide and what it made me feel. The Beguines is supposed to be sexy. But I just felt gross watching it. The film is aware of the unhealthy and toxic nature of this key relationship. Yet a focus on the sex and nudity in this story plus Casaril’s admittedly luxurious take on the story comes off as glamorizing and sexualizing the issue. While there are elements of the film that make it better than your average softcore, it’s far from strong enough as a story to be considered good outside the softcore subgenre. And that’s before you get to my ethical objections to the subject matter and presentation.

Overall rating: 3.5/10

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