Jacqueline Sassard had an atypical career : "Guendalina " was her debut and she gave up on acting just ten years after , and much to her fans ' surprise , after two important works :Losey 's "accident" and Chabrol's "les biches" ;she had said that if the latter was a success,she would call it a day because she wanted to end her career on an "idyllic note" ;she passed away last year , and one has never seen her getting old on the screen .....
......which is fine with me,because she's one of the most beautiful girls of the French cinema -though her career was mainly Italian-;her eyes and her long eyelashes ,she 's eye candy ; the French long-haired Audrey Hepburn indeed!
-"Guendalina is part valid psychological drama part soap opera ; it owes a lot to the principal which has plenty of go and makes her portrayal less derivative than it appears at first sight :the spoilt young girl who's got everything (who cares for your transistor ? -it was 1957- daddy gives me all that I want !) but whose parents' marriage is on the rocks.
A daddy (the great Raf Vallone ) she's certainly in love with ;the final sequence ,when she cries her heart out,is it for her boyfriend? Or is it because dad fell for mom again?
Statuesque SIlva Koscina as mom is totally miscast ;check her date of birth :she's only seven years Sassard 's senior!
There's an interesting sharp contrast between Guendalina's high bourgeois dwelling and her boyfriend's modest flat ; the raincoat is symbolic -for his mother , it's a great loss,much to his humiliation -and plays a prominent part till the very end ;it's the vital lead between the world where you can take everything for granted and the working class milieu where you have to work hard to secure your future (the exam ,which oddly concerns only history and geography ,is an easy way out though).
It's strange to see bourgeois Sassard (whose birthday gift is a tape recorder, in 1957!) enter a less privileged word; in her final movie ,"les biches" ,it's the other way about :a girl who draws does (=biches) on the sidewalk enters the wealthy word of Chabrol's bourgeoisie .
