A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Ever since I started going to the movies, French films have captivated me: most often in black and white, unusual stories, cinematic language in a totally different format from North American cinema. Well, "Elles ... les filles du plessis" inserts in this context. The director Bénédicte Delmas surprises us with a cinematic language that goes from traditional to innovative (here I'm going to abstain because I'm writing this and leave it to the reader's intelligence to understand what I mean). The story, for us men, reflects the complexity of the female ego and makes us feel "guilty" for having been born with the capacity to generate another being just feeling pleasure and leaving the "bad part" to our partners ... And that's what most men do ... unfortunately ... few are those (Jean = Robi Schinasi) who are men with capital M, assume what they "did" and marry their partner (Marie France = Roxane Bret). I'm sure that if this movie was directed by a man , the result would not be the same. By the way: Delmas was not intimidated in directing one of the greatest actresses of the French cinema: Sandrine Bonnaire and with its intelligence, she conducts the film from the beginning until the end, without devolve to the fussiness. A highlight for Noémi Merlant whose initial appearance is very striking: looking hard, relentless, challenging before the Foyer Directrice: you do not intimidate me, nobody intimidates me ...In time: the film is based on real facts and deals with houses that receive pregnant adolescents, what until the present exists in France. The action takes place in the early 70's, where sexual liberation begins without young people being even told how the human body works.Here in Brazil, in the northeast, the fact is commonplace and unfortunately generates from the economic point of view, underdevelopment for that part of the country ...Returning to the subject: on a scale of 1 to 10, my vote is: 8 (great)