Female underarm shaving, etc.

On the whole, this early-seventies-set movie captures the characteristic look and feel of the late sixties/early seventies period better than any other that I can recall having seen, including movies that were made at that time. I do have to take exception, though, to the shaven underarms and legs of Christine, Laure, and the other female characters. I also have to object to the substantial side-trimming of the art class model's pubic hair, a procedure that, to the best of my knowledge, no significant number of women were engaging in back then.

In the sixties and seventies in Europe, the forces of cultural tradition, skimpy female clothing, and hippie culture collided to create a display of young female body hair that from today's perspective seems almost unimaginable, and that remains much-missed by those of us who have the good taste to appreciate such things. Too bad that Olivier Assayas--unlike Ang Lee in 2009's Taking Woodstock, for example--failed to incorporate that into his mostly uncannily accurate portrayal of a fascinating (even if often distressing) period of recent history.