The New Girlfriend (2014) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by nadine x ★★★½

  this film contains an unironic shopping montage set to katy perry's "hot n' cold"

• Review by nick ★★★★ 2

  The New Girlfriend feels like a healthy combination of Almodovar's Talk to Her, and Dolan's Laurence Anyways, with the twisted plot of the former, and the sexual politics and pop culture of the latter. With a simply immaculate ensemble, Ozon's adaptation of the thriller novel is an overall enjoyable experience that's both consistently intriguing, and socially relevant.

  The New Girlfriend chronicles a lesbian trans woman's experiences exploring her own sexual identity after the death of her wife, which is for sure not a cinema topic with frequent occurrence, and Ozon was admirably respectful in his own queer approaches to present such a touchy issue, with suspense, humor and social commentary. The entertainment value of the source material is already high…

• Review by AbandonChimp ★★★

  It's nowhere near as problematic as The Danish Girl (for example), but I don't think Ozon really understands the transgender experience.

  Also, that is one very large, very screechy baby.

• Review by lauraud ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I did not know a man could be such a beautiful man and woman at the same time.

• Review by Dan ☃️ ★★★★ 5

  Anaïs demoustier😍
  
  Honestly there's a lot of cliche tropes in this movie that gets quite annoying sometimes. First of all, this movie is sooooo highly akin to a soap opera, with it's predictable & melodramatic screenplay, overbearingly dramatic score & soundtrack, basic cinematography, cringe dialogue & humor, lying character with silly reasons, far fetched accident, and so on. The only difference is it does dare to explore taboo subject & includes explicit scenes

  But I'd say Anaïs demoustier was totally beautiful & mesmerizing in here. Worth to watch for her alone. I also keen some of the soundtracks. It also manage to intrigued me throughout. Those aspects helps to overlook some of it's shortcomings to say the least. The plot wise also does a great…

• Review by Jonathan White ★★★½

  TIFF 2014 Film #5

  Reason for pick: director François Ozon, Swimming Pool.

  I see that the IMDB and TMDB descriptions of The New Girlfriend are completely spoiler free, and so will be this review. For anyone considering seeing it who reads reviews, tread cautiously, as an important plot development that’s only revealed near the end of the first act is sure to be spoilered.

  I’ll simply say that Ozon takes on a subject that is fraught with danger at every turn. There are so many minefields that only the bravest dare. I’m happy to say that with the help of his two incredible leads, he navigates it confidently and triumphantly.

  At the centre of the story is a complex relationship,…

• Review by Milez Das (Rohit Shivdas) ★★★★

  A story told with delicacy with romance, humor and transition. The New Girlfriend is something beautiful and sweet.

  Claire is finding difficulty to go to her best friend Laura's house since her death. She just can't cope with the fact that Laura has gone. One day she decides to finally go there as she has promised Laura that she will take of her daughter and look after her husband David. But to Claire's surprise she finds David transform into someone he has long desired to be.

  Directed by François Ozon, the subject chosen by him is very delicate. The movie is about a person coming out to the world but first to Claire. For Claire it is an unknown territory,…

• Review by 🖤 ★★

  are we done letting cis people write these movies

• Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★

  53/100

  A.V. Club review. Plays to the cheap seats now and then, but I don't really think it's offensive, in the sense of belittling or judging transgender individuals. Mostly, it's just badly muddled, as Ozon can’t decide whether to make it the crowdpleasing story of a cross-dresser’s empowerment or the (much thornier and more compelling) story of a woman who tries to recreate her dead best friend in the form of the woman’s effeminate widower. Judging from La Cérémonie, Rendell probably wrote the latter; if so, Ozon was a poor match for the material, as he's too empathetic to outsiders to place the emphasis where it belongs. The movie keeps feinting toward complexity and then retreating into fabulousness.

• Review by Robert Fuller ★½

  Oh, lordy. Based on an already out-of-date 1985 short story yet set in modern times, this movie is an odd anachronism, a culturally deaf throwback to the days when there was no difference between transgender and cross-dresser. Is there a modern young woman in this day and age who would be repulsed by a man dressed as a woman? And if there is, would she abruptly change her stance on the issue, for no real reason? The word "pervert," uttered with alarming self-righteousness, not only instantly turns the character into an unlikable transphobe, but breaks the movie free from reality, leaving it floating in this weird, useless limbo in which gender identity is neither discussed nor, apparently, understood. Things get…

• Review by cassandras_view ★★★★

  Mit "Eine neue Freundin“ gelang dem französischen Regisseur Francois Ozon eine einfallsreiche und sehr unterhaltsame Tragikomödie über eine ungewöhnliche Frauenfreundschaft mit so einigen Fragezeichen... 😉

  Was für ein toller, virtuoser Beginn... Eine Abfolge nur von Nahaufnahmen einer Frau aus sehr interessanten Perspektiven: Zunächst Lippen die von einem Lippenstift geschminkt werden, Wimpern auf die sorgsam Mascara aufgetragen wird, Haut die Puder bedeckt, Ohrringe die Ohren verschönern, ein paar Details eines Haute-Couture-Kleides, Finger die Ringe angesteckt bekommen, Dann erklingt Hochzeitsmusik – die Sache scheint klar.
  Doch dann sieht man, dass die so prächtig zurechtgemachte Braut in einem weißen Sarg liegt, der mit rotem Samt ausgeschlagen ist...

  Seit der Grundschule sind Claire und Laura beste Freundinnen. Doch Laura stirbt wenige Monate nach der…

• Review by maneleeo ★★★

  François Ozon delivers his story in a great visual manner, without over-exposing. Romain Duris is one of those actors you know he won't fail the part given. It does get too much embroiled on its own need for eroticism in cinema.