Girl meets girl. Girl leaves boy for girl. Girl misses boy and comes back. But then, girl misses girl.
Got that?But the real question is, can all three live together happily ever after? A domestic, bisexual menage a trois, if you will.
Apparently they can . . . at least in bad movies. And "French Twist" is about as bad as they come.
"French Twist" is a French film with a Spanish star, Victoria Abril (veteran of such Pedro Almodovar flicks as "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" and "High Heels"). She plays a slightly scatterbrained wife and mother named Loli (Abril), who is perfectly content with her life in a small, provincial town in southern France.
One afternoon, as Loli is trying to remove a child's toy from the kitchen drain, a van breaks down in front of the house and a stocky, short-haired, tough-talking, cigarillo-smoking lesbian named Marijo (Josiane Balasko, who also wrote and directed the film) knocks on the door. Loli's 5-year-old son tells her, "There's a man at the door."
Marijo is invited in, fixes the drain and finds herself immediately attracted to Loli, though her advances are politely declined. That is, until Loli discovers that her husband, Laurent (Alain Chabat), has been unfaithful.
Of course, this guy isn't simply having an affair - he's turned adultery into a second career; several trysts a day with several different women.
So, Loli succumbs to Marijo's charms and invites her to live with them, which drives Laurent crazy. When Laurent promises to change his ways, they work out a system - each week Loli will spend three days with Laurent and three days with Marijo. She gets Sundays off. (Goodness knows what Loli and Laurent's kids think about this.)
The result is the kind of door-slamming bedroom farce that no one can make anymore, and it also offers plenty of excuses for Abril to take off her clothes, which she does frequently.
The problem is, none of this is in the least bit funny.
Balasko (whose most familiar work to American audiences is as an actress in "Too Beautiful for You") is a heavy-handed director, encouraging her perfomers to play it all quite broadly, though her ridiculously contrived screenplay cries out for a light touch. She also deals exclusively in stereotypes, and much of the dialogue is made up of insult-comedy with a mean-spirited edge.
"French Twist" is rated R for violence, sex, nudity, profanity, vulgarity and marijuana smoking.