Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wingwomen’ on Netflix, a Turbulent Action-Comedy Smoothed Out by Melanie Laurent and Adele Exarchopoulos

Melanie Laurent directs Wingwomen (now on Netflix), a French buddy comedy/crime caper in which she co-stars alongside Adele Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Color) and Isabelle Adjani (many films but 1981’s Possession is the one you NEED to know) – and if you have any sense, that list of names alone should have you mashing PLAY before you finish reading this sentence. English speakers of course know Laurent from her acting roles in Inglourious Basterds and Beginners, but may not be aware that she’s directed seven features since 2011, with Wingwomen perhaps being her most ambitious, thanks to a sturdy Netflix budget and a desire to find a fresh angle on the action-comedy formula. Does she succeed? Let’s find out.  

WINGWOMEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Carole (Laurent) is busting ass through the woods with a sackful of diamonds. As heist-happy career criminals in movies so often do, she uses a Mission: Impossible wireless earpiece to chat with her partner Alex (Exarchopoulos), who tells her to turn left here and head south-by-southwest there, and all that. Except Alex keeps putting her on hold to chat with her soon-to-be-ex, who’s trying to dump her. At this point, crime must be pretty routine for these two if they can bicker-banter about the worthlessness of said soon-to-be-ex as they zip along trails on a four-wheeler, blast armed drones out of the air, and leap off a cliff so they can glide to safety in their Batmannish wingsuits. There’s even a bit where a bullet hits Alex’s phone and she’s mad because she needed it to desperately cling to this guy who doesn’t want her anymore (she should be mad because a trip to the AT&T store for a new phone is akin to dropping into a middle-tier circle of Dante’s Hell). Is Alex quick to fall in love, or just horny? The answer, of course, is yes!

Next scene: Carole pulls her feet out of the gyno stirrups. She’s preggers. But she keeps it a secret from Alex, which is a significant development, since the only way they could be tighter sisteresque friends is if they were joined at the hip. They live together and grocery-shop together and sleep in the same bed and when Carole is in the thick of a job, Alex perches high up with a sniper rifle and keeps her safe by, you know, putting bullets through foreheads. They work for the Godmother (Adjani), who’s loopy and dangerous like the most epic Evil Knievel stunt. Even before she learned she was pregnant, Carole was feeling weary of The Life. Theft, chases, shootouts, the all-black ensemble – it just feels like a job after a while, you know? But when she tells the Godmother that she wants to quit the business, this insane woman says everyone who tried to do that has their own personalized headstone now, so there goes the potential just-when-I-thought-I-was-out-they-pull-me-back-in plot for this movie. 

Rather, Wingwomen employs a different cliché: The Godmother will commit to Carole and Alex’s freedom if they pull off one last big score. Namely, snatching a valuable painting, a heist that’s absolutely 100 percent an afterthought to Carole and Alex hanging out, and recruiting Sam (Manon Bresch), a spunky racecar driver, to be the third wheel, sitting behind the wheel and driving the thing with wheels. So the three of them head to Corsica for a vacation consisting of poolside lounging and eating delicious food and dancing and maybe hooking up with a man and teaching Sam how to shoot a gun and occasionally doing crimes. Those crimes are threefold: One, snatching the floor plan of the art gallery. Two, snatching the painting. And three, killing the bastards who put a bullet in Alex’s pet rabbit. I know. Poor bunny. But this is what happens when you choose The Life, I guess.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are a few parallels to be drawn with The Nice Guys, Charlie’s Angels and The Heat, but mostly, Wingwomen comes off as Ocean’s Three-Eighths.

Performance Worth Watching: A reiteration: Alex is a badass, convincingly so thanks to Exarchopoulos, who can take a punch, but dishes out way more than she takes while also landing a righteous quip or three. Someone cast her in the next Wick or Mad Max film (but not The Expendable5, please). 

Memorable Dialogue: Alex, still unaware that her hetero lifemate is with child, catches Carole wolfing down pickles from the fridge in the middle of the night: 

Alex: F—, I could feel it. I swear, I could feel it. I can’t explain it… you’re postmenopausal. 

Carole: You whore.

Sex and Skin: Alex whups a man’s bare ass, metaphorically and literally. (To be clear: She boxes him while he’s naked.)

Our Take: I haven’t paid proper diligence to the emotional content of the story, which might be what separates Wingwomen from the rest of the action-comedy pack. (Besides the fact that most action-comedies are led by men, and tend to push women into the periphery, of course.) Laurent and Exarchopoulos’ easygoing lived-in chemistry keeps this movie afloat, just barely. The two principals find traction in comedic back-and-forth that could be funnier and snappier but is ultimately funny and snappy enough to sand down some of the film’s rougher edges. Laurent and Exarchopoulos entangle their characterizations to the point where we infer that Carole and Alex have been through some serious shit, some good times and bad times, over the years, and therefore share a significant bond. You wonder if they aren’t a little gay for each other, and maybe you’ll ’ship ’em in your fanfic, but there’s definitely a lot of that little thing called love there, and it’s sweet and spiky and, most importantly, it feels legit.

Otherwise, the film struggles to hold itself together. Action sequences thirst for a drop of tension, and they’re choppily edited; the heist itself is a tossed-off lark begging for more rigorous staging and stunt coordination. Comedy that isn’t rooted in dialogue tends to stumble (one notable exception is a no-chase chase where the novice Sam tears through town on a motorcycle without realizing nobody’s behind her). A hey-she-can-hang-with-’em performance from Bresch is spirited and entertaining, but doesn’t complicate the cast dynamic in any compelling way. Adjani is enjoyably nutty, but underused. And the ending is utter nonsense. But the emphasis on relationships over guns and screeching tires is novel; one can argue that a character-driven action movie is worth pointing your eyeballs at, especially if the cast is led by the likes of Laurent and Exarchopoulos in charismatic you-go-girl mode. They make it hard to dislike Wingwomen, in spite of its flaws.

Our Call: Wingwill you or wingwon’t you? I say STREAM IT, if only to see Laurent and Exarchopoulos kindle a little feminine magic in a typically male-dominated genre. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.