Chouchou (2003)

Storyline

Chouchou has just arrived in Paris from his home in North Africa. He is scatty and unworldly, and tries to get a bed for the night by spinning an implausible line about being a refugee from the Chilean dictator Pinochet. He is fortunate, because a kindly priest (Father Leon) in a working class suburb has some sympathy for him, and takes him in for a few nights. Father Leon also gets him a job with a lady psychoanalyst, Dr Milovavich, and the job is as receptionist and cleaner. Chouchou does the cleaning in a woman's dustcoat and when Dr Milovavich asks him what he would most like in the world, he replies that he would love to be a woman from head to toe. Dr M. is unabashed by this revelation, and tells him that from tomorrow he can come to work as a woman, Mlle Chouchou. He takes her at her word, and is startlingly convincing the next day, with good female body language, although let down by a marked dark beard shadow. Soon the doctor has to go away for a couple of days on business, and Chouchou is alone in the practice when an enraged client comes banging at the door; when he is let in, it turns out he is Inspector Gregoire of the police, having serious mental difficulties, due to the violent nature of his work. Chouchou has been reading the doctor's textbooks and tries a bit of amateur psychoanalysis but Gregoire becomes even angrier and storms out. When Chouchou leaves later on, Gregoire is waiting and Chouuchou only just escapes violence, ending up on the Metro and getting out at Clichy, the centre of the red light district in Paris. By coincidence Chouchou bumps into her cousin in the street, there. The cousin is male but is working at a bar called the Apocalypse, where he does an act as Vanessa. That night Chouchou goes with Vanessa to the bar; there are a couple of bouncers on the door, and as everyone kisses everyone else twice on each cheek, just getting past the door takes some time. There is also a customer (Stanislas de la Tour-Maubourg) hovering near the door, and he is evidently attracted to Chouchou. Chouchou starts work as a waitress in the club, and after some days, Stanislas comes in and approaches her. After some preliminaries, he takes her out for a meal, treating Chouchou as a girl. He is a perfect gentleman and very soon wants to take Chouchou to introduce her to his parents. Chouchou is a bit taken aback at this and consults Father Leon, but the kindly priest is not against it. So Chouchou goes with Stanislas to a seriously expensive hotel dining room where the parents are waiting to meet her. Stanislas has told his parents that Chouchou is herself a psychoanalyst, and Chouchou has to bluff her way out of it. Work at the club continues apace for Chouchou, but when she is back at the dcotor's consulting rooms, Gregoire turns up again, mad as ever. This time Doctor Milovavich is present; Gregoire is getting violent, so Chouchou knocks him out by hitting him with a large vase, that Milovavich told her earlier was of irreplaceable sentimental value. Chouchou now has to go on the run from Dr Milovavich because of the vase, and from Gregoire because of assaulting a policeman. Where and how will it all end?—Hazel Freeman