To begin with, I enjoyed watching this movie, for they always wear stylish clothes to show their personalities and taste of France.
The plot is not complicated; however, the most intricate part of this movie lies in human’s emotions. Precisely, it is the sexuality that none of us can understand or even have the courage to face. We humans are cultivated and socialized since our births in order for the standards and fixed positions in this world. Sexuality is no exception. We are taught that heterosexuality is normal; hence, a number of citizens who do not fit into this normalization of sexuality will either repress (part of) their feelings or live underground without being in the History. The exclusion of the normal identity is considered dark, wrong, ill, strange – all these negative terms that you can think of. Until the emergence of the post-structuralism, the excluded, unnamed people started to be noticed, valued, and traced back to their forgotten History.
It is very dangerous to look at this movie in terms of binary oppositions, such as man/woman, husband/wife, heterosexuality/homosexuality, etc. Claire is a great example. She married Gilles, but after she senses that she prefers being with Virginia, she leaves Gilles and marries Virginia. It is not relief of her divorce with Gilles, but she has a stronger feeling toward Virginia. It is hard to tell or to say that Claire loves men, or women, or both. Maybe it is safer to say that she loves the uncertain identity that David displays. From Claire, we notice that sexuality is not fixed as it has always been considered, but it owns the characteristics of uncertainty, floating above and below the level of the water.
At last not the least, transvestism plays probably the main issue in the movie. There is not only one reason for transvestism, for sure. It is absolutely dangerous to consider a man who enjoys cross-dress to be homosexual. In The New Girlfriend, we know that David claims that he loves women, and in the end he (David/ or she Virginia) marries Claire. Here, you see how problematic for me to use pronouns to indicate them. Of course, we can not be one-hundred-percent sure that David (Virginia) does not love men at all.(When Virginia goes to the theater and one man flirts her, she does not immediately refuse!) If he does, and it shows in this movie, it will be so much confusing to the audience. Or the audience will easily say that: “Oh!! He loves wearing and acting like a woman, so he love men. And he does!"
There is so much to talk about in this movie, and perhaps being developed into a well-organized essay on sexuality! But so far, I have attempted to use simple language and explain my perspective of this movie!
Yuan Lee Times 