In this way, Linda also discovers that one of her friends hasn't much time left to live. Barbara has for years devoted herself to her family, only to discover that her children have grown up, her husband has a younger mistress and she has to face the end of her life alone.

Barbara's 19-year-old son Luis has just started studying under her professor friend Eva. Eva is wooed by Luis until she throws caution to the wind and starts an affair. They secretly meet for erotic interludes in a friend's flat.

Chloé, owner of a beauty salon, is also helping her friend Branca find her daughter Rita and get her off drugs. She has first-hand experience herself, and so knows what she is doing. But she argues vehemently with lesbophobe Branca, in whom she has secretly fallen in love.

Branca, though, cannot leave any halfway attractive man alone, adding ever more to her long list of adventures. On stage as in life she reaps success with her personalities and often performs melodramatic scenes for her friends. Under all this liveliness is hidden deep dissatisfaction.

 
• Five women's stories packed into a normal-length film, only one – that of lesbian Chloé – cut off a bit short: this testifies to the density of the story. The problems Branca and Linda have to deal with are initially invisible even to them, which lifts elles from the status of the usual boxed episode film to something great. The women in the film have come to a crossroads, where they can either stoically continue with their lives as before, or go for something new.

elles is by no means a feminist film, otherwise some elements would have been more consistently handled, and Luis' attempted rape on his new lover Eva treated more clearly, and not merely forgotten about. But elles does show that women of any age can find their own way, and that is worth a great deal.

Filmdata:

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