Love on a Pillow

What's expected of a picture starred by sex symbol of greatness of Brigitte Bardot and her flaming presence? Quite sure something palatable likewise others BB's pictures focusing in her charming attributes and curvilinear shaped sexy body, instead in this suffering drama by a drunkard man Robert Hossein in bad behavior and self-destruction process in countless and pointless discussion concerning his useless life.

So even the most forbearing cinephiles surrender after half hour of everlasting misery, so upon these topics singled out above last night I'd to give up in those slow pace-agonizing experience ever had in BB's cinematography enforced by her former husband Roger Vadin in a lousy screenplay, to worsen the pseudo intellectual director imposes several losers characters on the boring narrative, so the extra-pissed viewers forsakes it checking out the time and making something meanwhile the picture reaching to the end.

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First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 5.

"Love On a Pillow" is a dubbed French film starring Brigitte Bardot at her most beautiful and alluring. An existentialist writer, artist, and musician from Paris attempts suicide in Dijon. He is saved when a lovely young Parisian girl, in town to claim a substantial inheritance left her by a rich aunt, mistakenly opens his hotel room door and finds him near death from an overdose of sleeping pills. Thereafter, he becomes her responsibility, they fall in love, and his abject alcoholism and stubborn cynicism both torment and liberate her. In the process, we see her transformed from an attractive young woman into a sexy beat hipster, and finally into a ravishing goddess who defines feminine beauty. It is very evident in this film why Bardot was considered one of the most captivating actresses of the early sixties. Particularly toward the end of the movie, there are closeups of her that take your breath away. The film's setting is very interesting, as well -- among artists and jazz musicians in Paris in the early sixties. The score is simple but ethereal. There is one touching scene in a café in Florence where the lovers are momentarily content and at peace. A guitarist approaches their table singing a pretty Italian love ballad. The man appears annoyed, then in a sudden outburst, chases away the musician because "that song has memories." The incident may reveal what is really bothering him. At the conclusion, the film's understated score moves to a poignant crescendo. "Love On a Pillow" is not just a beautiful film. It is easily Bardot's finest effort.

The title of my review ought to be enough to scare off the folks who are expecting a plot-driven, digestible story. You'll get none of that here.

Although there is indeed a plot (a rather interesting one, if you ask me), the power of this film lies not in the story but in the script and in the subtle, almost indecipherable fragments of philosophy we experience through these two highly complex characters.

Geneviève (Bardot) is the the romantic. Her counterpart Renaud (Hossein) is the cynic. The collision of their worlds causes a catastrophic upheaval in both of their lives. But it is undeniable that they need each other, just as the two opposing philosophies rely on each other. Sort of a yin-yang thing. At times they are at war with each other; at times they cling to each other for life; at times they threaten to annihilate the other absolutely. This is some really heavy stuff that cannot possibly be summarized in a few paragraphs, so I won't even try.

There are several monologues which are so stirring I want to learn them by heart. Particularly the last two speeches in the final 10 mins of the film. Pay close attention to those words, because they sum up the entire theme of the film. Powerful. Powerful.

This film had some charm by the time it was made. BB was in a great shape. The youth in occident were strongly influenced by a fashion based on a vulgar reading of existentialist philosophy. The first time I saw this film, during the sixties, I was 17 or 18, and a kind of a "rebel without a cause", fond of existentialist literature. So the film impressed me.

Today, seeing the film again, I found it almost stupid. I explain.

1. The revolt of Renaud is not explained in a context, so we don't know exactly why he is bitter, cynic, self destructive and iconoclast.

2. The author of the story tries to glamorize Renaud revolt, but, what I see can't be glamorized. For instance, Renaud wears the same unwashed clothes during several weeks (which seems to be the time the story lasts) doesn't take a bath and doens't shave his beard. He smokes all the time and drinks heavily since the time he wakes up. So, his clothes and his breath certainly stink disgustingly. He messes seriously Geneviève's apartment spreading all around dirty dishes and ash trays stuffed with smoked cigarettes. All this mess and dirtiness for nothing... or to punish unjustly Geneviève?

3. Geneviève looks rather as stupid blonde female because she falls in love with a stinking revolted pseudo-existentialist who does't do anything useful to anyone and criticize hardly the middle class life style, middle class of which he is actually a parasite.

The film deserves to be seen because of the presence of BB. She was marvelous by that time and a real icon of a generation. A queen of many dreamers as me.

This film seems like more than just a film, it looks and feels like what it would have really have been like to have Brigitte Bardot as your companion in life, for better and for a lot worse, as relationships go. Qualities such as loyalty, caring, warmth, tenderness, understanding, devotion, etc. endlessly flow from her to her suicidal, live-in lover, as time and again she brings him back from the depths of despair and self-destruction, to temporary recovery in her arms.

All this, however, serves to make him even more miserable, in the best masochistic tradition, as he falls even more deeply into his alcoholic albatross, rather than face real life responsibility as a sober, productive man with a good woman by his side.

Bardot exudes the utmost maturity and restraint in taking the best cheap shots this ungrateful con-artist, female user, and abusive man (Robert Hossein, in an outstanding interpretation of a difficult role) can dump on her. The problem here is universal in scope in that it portrays two people who are physically attracted to each other, to the point of addiction, while at the same time a classic mis-match from a values and a psychological perspective. "You always hurt the one you love," was never more in evidence than for the 102 emotion-draining minutes of this film. Clearly a Vadim masterpiece, and a triumphant collaboration with Bardot, long after their real-life divorce and her remarriage. This represents "professionalism" to the highest degree.