Cinequest: SWEET GIRLS

SWEET GIRLS
SWEET GIRLS

In the dark, dark Swiss comedy Sweet Girls, the two teenage besties are lazy and unmotivated – even by teenage standards.  They will do ANYTHING to avoid an entry-level job that might plunge them into the adult workaday drudgery that they despise.  Left to their own devices with a deadline looming, the two  take unseemly advantage when an elderly woman dies in their apartment building.  Absurdly self-involved, the two start harvesting all the apartment building’s elderly in an absurdly harsh scheme.  Think Arsenic and Old Lace and Sweeney Todd.

Both girls are brats of the first order, but Elodie, the ringleader, also has an experience in her past which has scarred her feelings about the geriatric set.  Neither is a sympathetic character.  The humor here comes from the absurdist plot and from the social satire, which is probably more accessible to a Western European audience.