Claude Chabrol's 'Les Biches' 1968

Not much you can do with jealousy,
store it, save it, turn it into anger?
Direct it at Jacqueline Sassard?
Call hers a retirement too early?

But would she even care,
as she daintily does her shopping
for things she doesn’t need
today in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat?

Not much longer for this life,
rich Gianni Lancia back home
with the framed photos of his dad’s
racing-cars in the gated villa,

decadently awaits her return;
because it’s still buonissimo
having la bella donna
he seduced away from all that -

stardom, looking beautiful -"
giving her the chance to run off
with him to Brazil at twenty-eight,
and she took it. Why not?

With a neat plunge of a knife
lifted down from the wall,
Jacqueline killed Stéphane Audran,
still working over sixty films later.

Why waited on the bed to reclaim
lover Jean-Louis Trintignant,
but Chabrol didn’t reveal what
we imagine happened next

or tell us what happened to Why.
No need, we know why: it was La Fin,
as, never to be caught on film again,
Jacqueline slipped away overnight,
from biche célèbre to biche anonyme.

(biche = doe, chick, babe, not b***h )

Author's Note

Claude Chabrol's 'Les Biches' 1968: film in which Jacqueline Sassard starred as the young woman called ‘Why’