warning: mild spoilers

From Germany with love comes the 2003 drama Beautiful Women (Schoene Frauen). The director states that this is a film for women, who like women and for men, who love women. We are introduced to a group of five women through a montage of each one deciding whether she is going to audition for the same part. All five show up to a grubby audition hall and proceed to size each other up and tear each other down. But after shared beers and snacks in the crucible of the waiting room, the women bond and decide to blow off the audition and take a spontaneous, chain-smoking roadtrip, in search of both an actual and metaphoric mountain to climb for cathartic release.

From there, Beautiful Women becomes a buddy film with all the bonding, revelations, and surprises one would expect. All of the women vaguely know each other, but it takes a night of mini-bar plundering and thousands of drinks for them to really open up. Geno (Clelia Sarto), the lesbian character, is having girlfriend troubles. Dana (Julia Jager) is pregnant and concerned that impending motherhood will hamper her acting career. Barbara (Floriane Daniel) calls her boyfriend incessantly and he never returns the messages while Kandis (Caroline Peters) can’t get her pushy lover to leave her alone. And Karin (Ulrike Tscharre) is just plain weird.

The character introductions don’t exactly inspire sympathy for the women. The angst-filled, processy, and somewhat boring expository early scenes aren’t very promising. But as the women get drunker throughout the night, they become much more forthright, and more interesting. The apex of the film is shot around a campfire with a refreshingly pragmatic narrative acknowledging that the best intentions after intense bonding experiences don’t usually end up in life long friendship.

A pleasant bonus on the film is the inclusion of the German cabaret act Queen Bee, a female duet (one sings and the other plays piano). According to the director, their music inspired the script, and they are introduced in the film as performers who use an off-season resort as a practice hall. Their humorous lyrics and lovely voices provide sassy comic relief throughout the film.

This film, made by a young male director well connected in the German arts scene, seems to have a great deal of commentary on the national state of the arts, which is lost in translation. A larger problem than this is the oddly stilted make-out scene that happens among the drunk women. That a group of drunk and mostly heterosexual chicks are going to suddenly contrive a reason to start making out with each other may be some men’s (and lesbians) fantasy, doesn’t make it any less far-fetched in reality or this film. The only character not participating in this is the lesbian. It appears to be done completely for shock value and the surprise revelation that happens during it could have developed any number of other ways.

Another problematic scene is when two of the women end up in bed together, and presumably have sex. There is a metaphorical quality to what happens that has to do with the mother as lifegiver, but the whole thing just seems a little unbelievable. I may be cynical, or simply unable to place myself in a cultural context that would allow two women who did not show any sign of being interested sexually in other women suddenly making love, but I didn't buy this scene.

I would also have liked to have seen more about what was going on with the lesbian character. She spent a lot of time brooding and not enough time using dialog to communicate her emotions.

But despite these problems, Beautiful Girls has some warm, funny moments, and is exhilaratingly frank in its examination of how women interact and compete with each other.

Beautiful Women screens at Outfest in L.A. on July 8, 2005