Although I've seen a lot of restored classics lately very few have engrossed me and this is one among the handful. Moreover, I watched this with zero expectations. And the experience? Extremely good. Ingrid Bourgoin as Simone is fantastic in her role as an usher employed in a theatre showing porn movies. She is a sapphist lost in the Parisians nocturnal urban space. She does her everyday chores and also becomes the object of male gaze who visit the cinema letting themselves be carried away. She is often misunderstood by surroundings and this is especially hard on Simone who breaks out of voluntary seclusion and goes to meet her girlfriend who works as a waitress at a lesbian club which is a world in itself. Later, she drives home with a stranger which is my favourite part of the film. It felt like Simone found temporary shelter but at the same time wants to break free from the urban solitude with approaching dawn. What comes together here with the three locations as a theme and a curious observations is an interesting triptych with bittersweet variety within the Parisian underbelly.
There is an amorous flush throughout the film but there is no vulgar or explicit scenes. That said, i know this is a kind of film that can look boring when viewed on the surface because most of the action takes place indoors. At first glance, the film is nothing revealing, but the main plot is interesting, at the beginning I had a somewhat contradictory feeling from the film, but in the course it immersed me until the end.
Produced by one of my favourite filmmaker Paul Vecchiali's Diagonale company, "Simone Barbes or Virtue" ("Simone Barbès ou la vertu") is an interesting character study in the very spirit of Eric Rohmer, Nina Menkes, Rudolf Thome, Rikiya Imaizumi, Doris Dörrie, Jim Jarmusch, Takis Kanellopoulos ,Sylvia Chang, Yann Gonzalez, Hal Hartley, Jacques Rivette, Atom Egoyan, Jon Jost, Alain Guiraudie, Serge Bozon , Wisit Sasanatieng and Silvio Soldini.
