Film

The Bitches

Name: The Bitches
Genre: Drama
Released: 1973
Cast: Janine Reynaud, Nathalie Zeiger, Françoise Dammien, Virginie Vignon, Latana Decaux

Social drama

A 1973 French drama about desire, jealousy, and the idle rich. A bored wealthy woman hires a young man to satisfy her fantasies, but possessiveness erupts when his attention wavers. Stylish, frank about sex and class, it's a chamber piece about how money and leisure corrode relationships into games of control.

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The Swimming Pool1969

Two couples at a French villa descend into sexual tension and murderous jealousy over a long summer. Alain Delon and Romy Schneider are magnetic. It has the same sun-drenched ennui and erotic game-playing that makes The Bitches so unsettling.

But Slow, deliberate pacing means nothing happens for long stretches. Some find the characters too shallow to care about their fates.

Contempt1963

Godard's masterpiece about a marriage dissolving amid wealth and artistic compromise. Like The Bitches, it's fascinated by how money and desire poison intimacy. Stunning to look at, devastating about what people owe each other.

But Talky and philosophical. Godard's style demands patience, and the gender politics, while complex, can feel dated depending on your read of them.

Bitter Lake2015

A woman's dissatisfaction explodes into erotic provocation on holiday. It has the same 1970s European sensibility about sex, wealth, and boredom as The Bitches, with real consequences.

But Hard to find and rarely discussed. The pacing is patient to the point of being opaque about what the film wants from you.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Bitches

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Story of O1975

Both films treat desire and submission with philosophical seriousness rather than judgment, and both are willing to explore how power dynamics operate within sex and class.

An erotic psychological drama about submission and power structured as a bildungsroman. Like The Bitches, it's interested in desire as a willful choice, in how people transform under erotic pressure, and in the strange intimacy of control. It's genuinely unsettling and philosophically rigorous.

But Explicit BDSM content. It requires a very specific comfort level, and the portrayal of female submission will repel viewers who see it as retrograde, however intentionally complex the film is.

Summer of '421971

A story of desire and jealousy set in a confined summer. Though aimed at a wider audience, it understands the erotic charge of longing and the danger when it gets twisted.

But Nostalgia-heavy and more conventionally sentimental. The tone is nothing like The Bitches' cooler, more cynical view of desire.

Stolen Kisses1968

Truffaut's comedy-drama about a young man navigating work, romance, and his employer's marriage. Lighter than The Bitches but shares its interest in how attraction destabilizes class hierarchies and domestic arrangements.

But Very French New Wave—elliptical, digressive, more interested in character than plot. Whimsy isn't for everyone.

The Graduate1967

A young man seduced by an older woman, then falling for her daughter. The sexual and class dynamics mirror The Bitches, though from the hired man's perspective. Iconic and genuinely suspenseful about desire.

But The satire of American suburbia hasn't aged as sharply as it felt in 1967. It can feel like it's winking at the audience rather than investigating its own scenario.

Belle de Jour1967

Buñuel's masterpiece about a woman whose repressed desires lead her into secret work. Surreal, erotic, and absolutely unafraid of female sexuality as something dark and unknowable. Matches The Bitches' refusal to judge.

But Deliberately cryptic and dream-logic. Some sequences are deliberately obscure, and the film has no interest in explaining itself to you.

Emmanuelle1974

Another 1970s French film about a woman exploring desire without shame. It's more explicit and less cynical than The Bitches, but shares the era's fascination with sex as a form of self-discovery among the privileged.

But The softcore reputation precedes it, though the film has more on its mind than skin. Still, if explicit sex makes you uncomfortable, this is not the ticket.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles1976

Both films refuse to sentimentalize or condemn female sexuality as it intersects with money and survival. Both treat the female body's economic value as central to their story.

A three-hour structuralist film about a woman's daily rituals: cooking, cleaning, entertaining a client for sex. No plot, no drama—just observation of how a woman organizes her life through routine. It's the inverse of The Bitches' erotic intensity, but it asks the same question: what is the relationship between female desire, economics, and power?

But Three hours of almost no dialogue or conventional narrative. You watch a woman cook and clean and have sex, sometimes for over a minute without cuts. This is experimental cinema; it's not trying to entertain you.