BB Dreams for CC

I dreamt last night I met Brigitte Bardot at a museum. It was in a non-existent European country. The museum was underground and seemed mainly to consist of the future according to the 1960s. Lots of Star Trek and Doctor Who sets--featureless grey and navy blue walls and panels with Christmas light keypads. She was more like 1950s Bardot, though, with long blonde hair and curly bangs. She showed me around. I tried to tell people about it but no-one believed me.

Oh, by the way, no Comic Con reports this year because I'm still in Japan. I actually considered going back to the U.S. for Comic Con since I still get a professional badge--actually the badge that was kicked down the line from the cancelled 2020 Comic Con. But at this point it didn't seem worth the expense or the risk. Maybe next year.

Twitter Sonnet #1603

The weather wrought a second Zeus for fame.
The double turned to two again to reign.
As tall in light the children grow defamed.
The prankster's circles lie beneath the rain.
The teasing teeth remembered tricked the red.
A dream of dragons changed to nights of bats.
The lab procured a book the monster read.
Assurance passed the mouths of ancient cats.
With jungle dreams the plane contained a map.
The ancient stone proclaimed the brothers moot.
With rolling fame the dame pronounced a sap.
The broken stone detained the slimy boot.
Forgotten fireplaces keep the cast.
The ash's lengthened limbs recall the past.

Love, Murder, and Bullfights

Does any love exist beyond lust and the heat of the moment? Having faith that it does, a virtuous young Brigitte Bardot hits the road in Spain on a donkey in 1958's The Night Heaven Fell. Directed by Bardot's husband at the time, Roger Vadim, it's like most of Vadim's films in being a melodrama not nearly as profound as it thinks it is. But it's entertainingly tawdry and Bardot is fantastic as always.

She plays Ursula, a young women who's decided not to be nun so moves from her convent to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle in rural Spain. As she passes through the little town near her uncle's estate, she sees a woman crying over the corpse of a beautiful daughter. That daughter's brother is a handsome young man called Lambert (Stephen Boyd) and he vows revenge against the man who drove his sister to suicide. He dramatically hitches a ride on Ursula's car.

That man is none other than Ursula's uncle who turns out to be a pretty simplistic villain. Every time you see him, he's either trying to kill or rape someone. He sets his sights on Ursula for the latter but she manages to escape his clutches by climbing a tree.

Tragic and torrid circumstances unfold and most of the movie consists of Ursula and Lambert on the lam. All of it is really window dressing for Bardot, though, plot business to make excuses to show her in torn clothes or using the servant's shower. It culminates in a climax in which she gets more naked than usual for one of her films from the period--maybe it was the natural progression from famously showing her butt in . . . And God Created Woman, also directed by Vadim, a few years earlier. The Night Heaven Fell is really no worse than that more famous film. It's a nice piece of pulp and Bardot is a magnificent vision.

The Night Heaven Fell is available on The Criterion Channel.

A Star with a Garnish of Film

Why is Brigitte Bardot so perfect? That's the chief question to recur in my mind as I watched 1957's Une Parisienne. The plot of this otherwise disposable comedy is as generic as its title--people running around houses and bedrooms to discover or conceal adultery. Or to languidly pontificate on the necessity of adultery. None of it manages to exceed the allure of Bardot's physical proportions.

I guess she's most famous for her posterior but in this movie my eye was caught mostly by the juxtaposition of her shoulders, bust, neck, and chin.

After a complicated misunderstanding, she marries the government secretary she'd had a crush on (Henri Vidal). But, suspecting him of keeping a mistress, she starts fooling around herself with none other than His Highness, Prince Charles, played by none other than Charles Boyer.

He's clearly in this movie for one reason and one reason only; to make out with Brigitte Bardot. Their energy doesn't exactly crackle but each always seems sweetly delighted by the other. That was another thing about Bardot, maybe the more important thing, likely the thing that inspired philosophical essays about her--she was so self-possessed. She could play innocent (better when she was younger) but she never had that deer-in-the-headlights look or the confused panic affected by most leading ladies in the situations Bardot was typically placed in.

It's her lips, too. With the chin and the shoulders and the . . . Well, it's everything.

Une Parisienne is available on The Criterion Channel.

Secretary with Benefits

Expend some sympathy, if you will, for the poor man who's spent his life devoted to making love to beautiful women who then finds Brigitte Bardot is contractually obligated to have sex with him in between taking dictation for his new novel. Such is the sad fate of a man named Jerome in 1969's Les Femmes, a simultaneously kinkier and less interesting version of Paris When it Sizzles.

Jerome (Maurice Ronet) is an author famous for writing about his romantic affairs but, now in debt, he finds himself frustrated by writer's block because he's tired of women. His publisher devises a solution--hire a woman to be both secretary and prostitute for Jerome.

Clara (Bardot) answers the wanted ad but doesn't hear about the sex part until she's in the publisher's office. In what will be a nonsensical running gag, she's shocked, she's offended, she asks how dare he ask her such a thing and, yes, she absolutely agrees to do it.

In the screenplay, this is nowhere near substantial enough of a reason to give as to why Clara's different from Jerome's other lovers. But much as Audrey Hepburn's Audrey Hepburn-ishness made her character work in Paris When it Sizzles, it's entirely Brigitte Bardot's Brigitte Bardot-ishness that sells the premise of this picture.

The highlight of the film is a long scene where Jerome chases Clara through a train. Why is she running? Why is he chasing? It's not entirely clear but it's goofy and fun. The novel he dictates to her consists of flashbacks to his other lovers, who get a lot more naked than Bardot, of course, but none can truly compete.

Passing the Time and the Marriage

September's almost over but there's still time for a mildly diverting tryst with Brigitte Bardot in 1967's Two Weeks in September (À coeur joie). Never quite finding much to say beyond its basic premise and lacking chemistry between its stars, there's nonetheless a pleasant vibe to the meandering film with its cool, xylophone heavy score that would probably be quite nice to relax with after a few drinks.

Cecile (Bardot) is a model married to an older man named Philippe (Jean Rochefort). She's childishly dependant on his guidance and naively believes he wouldn't mind too much if she cheats on him. Her work requires her to spend some time in London and, despite her pleas, Philippe decides not to accompany her.

It's in London she unhesitatingly responds to flirtations from the young and handsome Vincent (Laurent Terzieff) who looks to me like a cross between Cillian Murphy and Willem Defoe.

So he wins on looks but as an actor Terzieff seems generally disconnected from his scenes while Bardot plays Cecile with such a generalised zest you get the impression the two end up together just because they happen to be standing next to each other.

A lot of time is spent on Cecile's photo shoots in the first half of the film which makes it feel like a behind the scenes documentary on Bardot's modelling career. In the second half, Cecille and Vincent hop into a car and spontaneously drive to Scotland where their car breaks down. Fortunately a conveniently fluent in French Scotsman, complete with a kilt, happens by and takes them to his ancestral castle.

There are some pretty shots of the nearby cliffs. I appreciated shots of Bardot gazing out at the sea cut with footage of birds hovering in the wind blasting the cliff face.

The idea is for us to see Cecile's dilemma as she finds Philippe isn't the only man in the world after all but the characters and relationships are never developed enough to explore any of the issues. It's mostly just pretty people hanging out in pretty places.

Twitter Sonnet #1158

An offered drink contains the walls and floor.
An amber space permits the ghosts of drakes.
A bottle took the fine constructed door.
A lattice weaves between the piled rakes.
Rotations spill the bath before the plug.
Rotundas top collective cases spent.
A brace of suits retire hardly snug.
Confetti graced the nervous, breathing vent.
Beside the speaking leaves the people pass.
The boulders under earth return to guts.
A piece of hill and mountain made a mass.
The ploughing stones en route created ruts.
The later oats resort to cakes and spice.
Ingredients were hidden, even rice.

Houses of Sex and Love

There are many ways to frame culture wars; liberal versus conservative, change versus stability, innovation versus tradition. Partisans have trouble admitting that generally we need some compromise between the two so maybe that's where the Romantic Comedy can help. 1962's Love on a Pillow (Le repos du guerrier) uses the familiar pairing of a lower class guy and a upper class gal to comment on the cultural conflicts of the 50s and 60s. It's no masterpiece but it is an entertaining and thoughtful film directed by Roger Vadim and based on a novel by feminist author Christiane Rochefort.

A wealthy heiress, Genevieve (Brigitte Bardot), checks into a hotel in Dijon and accidentally enters the wrong room where she discovers a man named Renaud (Robert Hossein) unconscious in bed from an intentional overdose of sleeping pills. She calls for help and his life is saved by her fortuitous accident.

She has a fiance back in Paris but the Florence Nightingale syndrome kicks in when she has lunch with Renaud after he's released from the hospital. So she takes him home to her recently inherited sumptuous manor. Like many Brigitte Bardot movies, a lot of the plot revolves around her being naked and she and Renaud first make love after he walks in on her nude, gazing into her massive fireplace.

"Make love" might not be the right expression because the film's central conflict is over the difference between love and sexual attraction and whether the former even truly exists. Genevieve is shocked by Renaud's bohemian lifestyle yet can't help following his advice when it comes to blowing off her commitments. She also breaks up with her fiance because she insists she loves Renaud but Renaud insists the two of them have an open relationship because he thinks love as a concept is just part of the bourgeois tyranny that stifles natural human sexual urges.

Because the first half of the movie is apparently about him opening her eyes to life's realities, and her feelings of liberation as a result, she doesn't seem to have a leg to stand on to argue in favour of anything so stodgy as monogamy. He's something of a beatnik and takes her to meet his friends, the typical movie beatnik assemblage of hazy poets, scattered jazz musicians, and girls with slightly dishevelled hair. Both Renaud and Genevieve flirt with other people but they also keep watching each other.

There are problems that become apparent in Renaud's philosophy, if the fact that he was trying to commit suicide wasn't already an indication. He can't commit creatively, for one thing, and Genevieve discovers the book he's been working on is just the same first sentence over and over, like the writer in Camus' The Plague. As Renaud's outlook on life is gradually revealed to be less and less adequate to suit his emotional needs, Genevieve tells his father that she feels a strange peace, commenting, "It's like giving birth. Like I now have the strength to live for myself . . . " At the same time, she also says, "I feel like I understand him now."

What had been presented as a conflicted between the Beat and the Old Money is really a conflict about power and freedom. When he was rocking her world, he had the power and freedom, and then when she has the upper hand, the power and freedom is hers, and now she can look back and understand how he felt when he had her at a disadvantage. Naturally, this calls into question the wisdom of subscribing to either philosophy wholesale and she seems to know it.

It's a nice looking movie and the performances are good though Bardot has a tantrum at one point that seems a bit forced, as though she told Vadim she wanted to do the scene in Citizen Kane where Kane smashes up Susan's room but the story here doesn't quite justify it. Of course, she looks terrific.

Twitter Sonnet #1149

The winking waves report in frothy lids.
A crowded grin replete with eyes appeared.
In razor slats the apple fell to bids.
The table took the chips for something weird.
The pair repaired beneath an absent roof.
A weakened pull divests a world of moons.
At craggy hill the place entraps a hoof.
For flocking dreams the tired walker swoons.
Collected chairs established last the screen.
Contained between the leather arms they sat.
In lavender and coffee friends've made the scene.
The books returned the fertile brain of Cat.
A cast assembles parties off the sheet.
Instead of cake they sliced neglected peat.

Hiding Brigitte

Keeping a gangster's beautiful daughter hidden while her father is on the lam can be trickier and involve more slapstick and songs than you might imagine. In 1956's Naughty Girl (Cette sacrée gamine) a suave nightclub singer has just such a task which makes for a delightful screwball comedy that is overshadowed slightly by the loveliness of its star, Brigitte Bardot.

Jean Clery (Jean Bretonniere) is kind of a low rent Dean Martin who sings at a cabaret club. He's engaged to a fussy psychotherapist named Lili (Francoise Fabian) before his life is upended after a gang boss he's indebted to (Bernard Lancret) tasks him with caring for his young daughter. Jean not only has to hide young Brigitte (Bardot) from the authorities, who'd want to question her in connection to her father's crimes, he also has to keep hidden from her the fact that her father is a gangster, something the old man's kept her ignorant of so far.

It's a good set up for screwball and it starts paying off immediately when Jean goes to retrieve Brigitte from a dance school where she's being taught some kind of group Grecian ode to spring dance in a tiny white dress. He's much more panicked than she as the two run from the cops through the showers and then out onto the lawn and into a car. She reminds him with only mild perturbation that she's almost naked.

Bardot easily outshines Bretonniere. Director Michel Boisrond contrives several creative teases for the audience with her. The first time we see her, greeting her father outside their mansion, she seems to be fixing some dirty machine while wearing only a shirt and panties.

Then she takes the shirt off to reveal a perfectly innocent (well, really scandalously two piece) swimsuit before diving into a pool that was nearby all the time.

Hiding in Jean's home Bardot is great in plenty of the inevitable suspense comedy as she manages to stay just out of the eyeline of a visiting police inspector and hilariously tries to give a parrot to a gang courier who assumes she's speaking in code. The film also has a few nice musical numbers--Bretonniere's singing underwhelms but Bardot is great in the dance numbers, particularly in a series of Jean's fantasies. According to Wikipedia, this movie was more successful at the box office than the contemporaneous And God Created Woman, and I think I do like this film better.

Twitter Sonnet #1141

A fluttered page retracts a progress out.
A system cut from scattered eyes appears.
The telling steam is whispered through the spout.
A rolling heat expands for sick arrears.
The neon stars displaced a cup of dice.
Familiar streets of film support the train.
A starving king absconds with sacred rice.
A brilliant queen converts her scotch to rain.
Reports reflected false and true combine.
The thorn's decisions planed to steady hum.
Collected leaves import the weird divine.
Discussion ceased for grim reporting drum.
In bouncing off the cave a hail collapsed.
The atmosphere in silence sure relapsed.

Virginie, the Inquiring Voyeur

Nothing complicates a relationship quite like a murder. When Brigitte Bardot spots her husband with a gun standing over the body of a deceased Dawn Addams in 1959's Come Dance with Me (Voulez-vous danser avec moi?) she draws the natural conclusion. But she's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and plays detective for the bulk of this mostly charming comedy murder mystery.

The beginning of the film takes us quickly through how Virginie (Bardot) met Herve (Henri Vidal). The opening credits are played over footage of Bardot, dressed for mildly formal cocktails, impatiently trying to get a dentist on a pay phone. Her father has a toothache--when she finally reaches the home of a dentist, Herve, he's busy with a very informal poker game.

As Virginie and her father arrive at Herve's home, we're presented with this contrast between a carefully brought up, possibly sheltered, young woman and this dishevelled barbarian.

But they're both attracted to each other and, a few jump cuts later, they're married and having an argument in which they declare never intending to speak to each other again. Herve goes to a club where he runs into Anita (Addams) and goes home with her, passionately kissing and fondling her while her accomplice, a very young Serge Gainsbourg, secretly takes pictures.

Herve backs off, saying he can't be unfaithful to his wife, but I'd say he'd already crossed that line when he started kissing Anita, to say nothing of when he pulled her top off and we were given a shot of Addams' nipple double. When she and Gainsbourg decide to implement their blackmail scheme, Herve goes to confront her where she teaches at a dance studio, Virginie follows, the body is found, and the main plot begins.

Most of the film is from Virginie's perspective as she tries to figure it all out. Like her, we're not sure if her husband is guilty or not. Those who employ the term "male gaze" would say of course this film is still an example of the male gaze not only because of its male director and screenwriters but because of how the language of film was created by men. One of my objections to the term "male gaze" is its variety of definitions and how many amateur critics lazily switch between definitions while using the term over the course of a single review. Another complication is evident in this film when one of the suspects Virginie encounters is a gay man named Daniel (Philippe Nicaud).

The police are suspicious of him because of his "morality" as he puts it but Virginie shrugs and says she has no problem with him. I wish I could say this was the beginning of a surprisingly enlightened attitude in a film for its time but unfortunately this does not turn out to be the case. It's not Dressed to Kill bad but it is in the same ball park--that is, the trope of gay men doing bad despite the nice heterosexuals obviously willing to accept them. This is a product of a certain latent code of morality, part of what would be labelled the "male gaze" but it's clear here the term is hopelessly deficient and reflective of a too limited perspective. Obviously this gaze is not inherently male.

But Virginie's sexual attitude is intriguing in less disappointing ways. While Herve was having his ill-fated first encounter with Anita, Virginie reveals she'd been at a strip club, watching women strip. She'd seemed to enjoy this, an interesting comment on sexual power dynamics, but says she'd much rather watch men strip.

There's a rabbit hole of radical thought that would finally say any expression of sexual voyeurism or assertion on a woman's part is still a product of the oppressive patriarchy. But Come Dance with Me is mostly a fun fantasy, obviously influenced by Hitchcock, but never comes near To Catch a Thief or even The Trouble with Harry.