I don't think that "Beau Pere" (1981) by Bertrand Blier is so much about what Marion says: "I am a woman. A woman of 14 years (...). Admittedly, my breasts are small, but they do react when touched". One should not let oneself cheat about how much this is a movie about the definition or role of morality in French society, either. The story is close to surrealism, and that form of surrealism which discloses a strong humorist or almost clown's function, as, e.g., in Concrete Poetry. Therefore, I see in the center of this movie rather the poor Stepfather, Rémy, whose eternal faith it seems to be to never overcome his status as a stepfather. Not only has he a stepdaughter with his wife, he subsequently becomes the lover of his stepdaughter. In one scene, even his status of stepfather is questioned when the school-psychologist asks the girls father and stepfather who are both present: So you both are fathers of the girl? While her real father answers by yes, Rémy says: I am rather her mother. Marion wishes children from Rémy for the future telling him explicitly that he should transcend one day his role of stepfather. But before he gets there, he jumps off their relationship in order to join Charlotte, a single mother of a little daughter (whose stepfather he soon will become, since Charlotte says to him: Tu Vas Guérir (you will be healed)). At that point at the end of the movie, it can be no doubt that Rémy will never become a real father but always remain in the substitutive function: Not a father, but a stepfather, not the original lover, but a step-lover, not with the mother of his child, but with the mother of his stepchild.
Review of Beau-père
