Galia (1966) A New Wave Noir Femme - Woman's Noir

Directed by Georges Lautner (The Road To Salina). 

Written by Vahé Katcha and adapted by him and Georges Lautner. Cinematography was by Maurice Fellous, Music by Michel Magne, title sequence JS Bach.

The film stars Mireille Darc as Galia, Venantino Venantini as Greg, Françoise Prévost as Nicole, Jacques Riberolles as Matik, François Chaumette as Wespyr.

Seine-Maritime. A rocky French coast. White chalk cliffs carved into pillars and arches, fringe scalloped by pebbled beaches. 

A woman's voice, Galia tells us that she lived in Étretat. It was a vacation town that wasn't very exciting in the off season. At 22, while swiming and sitting on the pebble beach she decides to split for Paris. Eventually becomes a successful window dresser who she tells us spends her off days searching for and buying unusual items for her displays. 

At 22, while swiming and sitting on the pebble beach she decides to split for Paris.

Splitting for Paris

Eventually becomes a successful window dresser who she tells us spends her off days searching for and buying unusual items for her displays. She also prowls men.

We segue to Galia coming home from her "date," she continues her VO in the shower. She lives freely near Notre Dame close to the Seine, she tells us. Picks up men when she needs one. 

Mireille Darc as Galia

We segue to Galia coming home from her "date," she continues her VO in the shower. She lives freely near Notre Dame close to the Seine, she tells us. Picks up men when she needs one. 

In Étretat, she tells us, that afterwards men would take her dancing, in Paris they just ask for her phone number. She laughs, because she tells us, she doesn't have a phone number. 

Her only real friend Matik arrives on leave from the service. After work she goes to meet him at Le Select a bar. Matik was her first flirt in Paris (i.e. lay). 

She tells him she's bored. He tells her to do what I do, play act. She laughs. They go to  another bar and sit together. He asks her if she is looking to get married. No, she tells him that being 22 years in Étretat was enough like marriage. He tells her he loves her. She tells him she's looking for joy, freedom and adventure. 

Later that night Galia is sitting on a stone embankment along the Seine near her apartment. She throws a coin into the river making a wish. Is she wishing for more adventure?  

She gets it. 

She spots somebody out in the dark water struggling to stay afloat. She strips off her jacket and jumps in. She is a good enough swimmer to bring the drowning woman to a landing under a bridge.

Dalia asks the woman if she is alright. The woman tells her she's sick. She slides down the wall sitting on sidewalk. Galia goes back and retrieves her jacket, and lights up a cigarette and offers it to the woman. The woman says no. She is sick.

Galia takes the woman to her apartment. She fixes her something that she can keep down. She helps the woman out of her wet things. Puts her in her bed all the while pumping her for her backstory and how she got into the river. 

Françoise Prévost as Nicole

She tells Galia that she was trying to commit suicide. She left a suicide note for her husband to find. Galia tells her that no man is worth suicide. She tells Galia her name is Nicole. So, now she's changed her mind and needs Galia to go and retrieve that note before he comes back to Paris.  Galia excitedly tells her yes she will do it, it's another adventure. 

Galia changes into dry clothes and heads to Nicole's apartment. There she gets the spare key from under the floor mat and enters the apartment. She finds and reads Nicole's note, then decides to leave it. 

She tells Nicole it's better to make her husband think that she may have committed suicide. Nicole disagrees and has Galia take her to her apartment house, but when she sees that the living room and bedroom lights are on decides not to go up. 

She decides to take Galia up on her offer of staying with her. Galia now goes into Nancy Drew / private detective mode. Another adventure.

Galia begins to spy on Greg, Nicole's Italian husband. He doesn't seem very broken up by his wife's suicide note and disappearance. Galia tails him from the jewelry store where he works. 

Galia the detective

He's a ladies  man. He says goodbye to one girl then soon after enthusiastically catcalls loudly to another eating a popsicle. Greg is turned on by that. Galia makes a mental note. 

Venantino Venantini as Greg

Later Greg meets still another woman at a café, etc., etc. 

Galia reports all this to Nicole. Galia, with Nicole's blessing, now inserts herself into Greg's crosshairs. Galia knows just how to do it.

There's a great sequence (below) outside of Greg's shop where she cute meets him by design, dressed in tight white pants, a tight top, asking him for directions all the while suggestively eating some type of ice cream bar, the subtext there is quite apparent.  

She gives Greg, all the while she's with him, an I'm interested look, lets him give her some of his pickup lines, laughs at him in voice over, and reports back to Nicole. Her next encounter with Greg is at a pool. He's busy trying to pickup a brunette with too much makeup, they are sitting at a table under an umbrella. Here we get even more "oral" subtext. 

A thunderstorm announces its presence dropping a heavy downpour on the apron of the pool. 

Everyone scrambles under the table umbrellas. Galia sees this as an opening. She scoots over and joins Greg and the brunette. 

Galia is soaked but still looks gorgeous, the brunette is concerned with touching up her warpaint. Galia teases Greg, runs off and jumps into the pool. Greg follows Galia to the far end of the pool, they talk and make a date. 

At a diner date, during her manipulation of Greg, she meets a creepy n associate of his named Wespyr, who makes it known to Galia through his manner that he is also interested in her. 

François Chaumette as Wespyr

Galia is asked by Greg to go away with him for a long weekend in Venice. There, Galia finally falls for him and finally goes to bed with Greg. 

The Venice sequence. surprisingly. uses a leitmotif of Bach particularly the Largo of his Harpsichord Concerto No. 5 in F minor BWV 1056 and then after Galia and Greg make love using a cover by The Swingle Singers - doing their cool acapella scat version in basically what is a nice music video montage sequence of a moody off season Venezia. You would think Venice - Vivaldi no? But the Swingle Singers were a great choice regardless.

Venezia 

When Galia gets back to Paris and fills Nicole in on all the details Nicole cries and tells her that this is basically Greg's M.O. with women. 

Galia is having another date with Greg. She gets all dolled up, buys a new dress. She waits at the rendezvous. He stands her up. She decides to pay him a visit. Galia rings the bell. The door swings open to a smoke filled room. 

Galia sees Greg standing behind it. She finds a party going on. It looks  like everyone is high. It looks like the start of an orgy. Greg, looks obviously loaded. 

In the distance is a couch. Wespyr sits at the far end of it half turned towards the naked woman who stretched out has laid her feet on Wespyr's lap and has her back against the couches armrest. Another woman standing father back is swaying about wrapped in a section of curtain, and another blonde woman with short hair, is topless and she dances about wearing just a sport jacket, flashing a bit of boob at her audience as she moves.

The dancer, the woman on the couch, and Wespyr, are all snapping their fingers intime to the music. 

Galia still standing in the doorway asks Greg what is going on, she's been waiting 2 hours? Greg asks her, what day is it? Thursday! Greg asks Galia to forgive him, he completely forgot. Greg tells her they will have their date tomorrow at 8:00 instead. 

At about that time another brunette, Vivienne comes up the elevator to the foyer outside of Greg's. The dancing blonde comes running out of the open door and greets her. Greg ushers the blonde and the brunette back into the apartment and shuts the door leaving Galia out in the foyer. Galia is starting to lean towards telling Greg the truth.

A couple of days later while on one of her "play dates" with Greg. Greg asks Galia if she wants to go to New York and Miami with him. Galia asks him what about his wife, and Greg finally shows her Nicole's suicide note. 

They make love. Afterwards while they are laying in bed, Greg gets a couple of phone calls where he hears just breathing on the other end of the phone. Galia is unsettled, so Greg confesses to her that it's probably Nicole, and explains that Nicole has threatened suicide a number of times in their relationship. 

Now Galia is wondering about Nicole, but she doesn't have to worry about that too long because when she is at her dressmakers shop getting fitted She gets a call from Greg. 

It all goes Noirsville when he tells her that after she left he called the police to report both Nicole missing and about finding her suicide note, and the police tell him that they fished Nicole's body out of the Seine. 

Noirsville

Jacques Riberolles as Matik rt.

Lautner creates an interesting and beautiful film that gives us a view back to a 1965 swinging sixties Paris (and Venice). Galia is a free and independent sexually active young woman who gets gets slowly trapped in a web of love with the wrong guy. Mireille Darc gives a nice convincing performance and will remind you a bit of Brigitte Bardot. Venantino Venantini is believable as the womanizer with a chick magnet while Françoise Prévost is equally compelling as the distraught wife. François Chaumette as the hedonist Wespyr is creepy. 

A very well made, quirky, talky, intelligent, everyday Woman's Noir  that could use English subs. 7/10.