A Very Private Affair

This movie did a great job of showing the French lifestyle and the time during which it was made. Most of the comments here are negative, but I thought this was one of the best movies I've seen in many months.

Jill's daily life, shown in the opening sequence when she travels by boat and bicycle to see her mother and various friends, is a wonderful example of European life where things are much prettier and healthier than in the US. Individuals are free to be with nature without making a conscious effort to do so.

The story of the movie is OK, not great, but certainly ahead of its time in the portrayal of the media culture. Diana Princess of Wales should have watched this movie.

Watching Louis Malle's La Vie Privée was an exercise in patience that finally managed to pay off. It wasn't even the bleak colors (remeniscent of the cheap color prints of the 60's) or the lack of chemistry between Bardot and Mastroianni that pushed the audience to the limit. It was perhaps the stilted dialog, made nearly unbearable by the fact that it was poorly dubbed into English. Maybe the film would have worked better in black and white or as a silent. Maybe not...The films final sequence (stretching over the last seven minutes) redeems nearly all its faults. The carefully composed shots, alternating between the faces of the stars and a play being performed on stage (with a remarkable backdrop of an old Spoletto basilica) empowered by moving music brings us closest to the characters. Once again, the so-called "silent" moment dominates the film, showing us the director's capabilities in full bloom. The tension is enhanced by an increased tempo in editing, leading perfectly to the climax. For what may be a deeply flawed film, I feel bad for the people that left early. Those last seven minutes define great film-making.

Another reviewer mentioned nouvelle vague and it's true this film stinks of French New Wave. Of course the time was really the style's zenith when even boring pretentious garbage was treated like great art. Hard to take is the acting style that seems to come with the movement -very flat and anti-emotional - a little too Neo-realist for most tastes especially in America where actors tend to chew the scenery. Heck Tom Cruise apparently chews the scenery in ordinary life or at least on talk shows.

However I found there was a kind of chemistry and disturbing reality in Bardot's portrayal of the sex kitten. She was one moment almost catatonic and another bubbly. But how contemporary to see the star as a kind of trapped animal like a fox with dogs and hunters in pursuit. One could see this movie being remade with Brittany or another of the modern celebutantes in the starring role. Was Bardot playing herself? Well isn't that the kind of truth we look for in art? Malle could have been alluding to Marilyn or any modern celebrity caught in the maelstrom of fame. The relationship with Mastroanni seemed especially perceptive. He wants to protect her, but she wants to live and she can't. Certainly think Brittney could relate to this one especially to Jill's own mother selling her out to the press. We've seen that one lately, haven't we.

Not a fun movie but one that stays with you and that's rare these days.

After having seen Louis Malle "Crackers", we thought the director might have bad luck with that film, but viewing "Vie Privee", his 1962 effort that deals with fame and being in the limelight, one wonders what did attract him to get involved in this project. Granted, the dubbed English version that was presented recently on cable hasn't kept well and the translated dialog is horrible. The director collaborated with Jean Paul Rappeneau and Jean Ferry in the screen play, which might have made more sense in the original version that what it does in the one we saw.

The story about the beautiful Jill, who at first is seen as wanting to be a ballerina, changes without any explanation as this young woman is "discovered" for the movies, something that even for France, never occurs in such a quick fashion, and we can't buy it. Then at the pinnacle of her fame, Jill is thrown into despair as she can't cope with the invading horde of paparazzi that hound her and don't let her live a normal life. Jill runs back home to Geneva to be with her mother and then she turns into Fabio, who was seeing her best friend.

The film is tedious, at best. Marcello Mastroianni and Brigitte Bardot appear to be going through the motions, but actually there is no chemistry between them. These two attractive stars seem to have been cast just for their allure to fans, but actually they never connect.

Malle was an accomplished director of varied taste -- witness Pretty Baby (1977), a study in adolescent prostitution, and Au revoir les enfants (1986), a devastating account of youth in a private school in collaborationist France (with autobiographical hints.) But in Vie privee (1962) -- and please, it is Vie privee, not La vie privee (there is a difference) he achieved a dazzling, virtuosic, and at times subtle, at times hypnotic study of a movie starlet's sudden rise and precipitous fall from the limelight; her intense ambition, hiding a neurotic self-love, seems to evaporate as her life enters a new phase, becoming involved with a friend's former lover whom she had looked to for help. Bardot is captivating: she fills the screen, by turns stunning, radiant, and brooding, playing the role as though it were her life's story; add a suave and elegant Marcello Mastroianni as the glitterati who hides the fallen starlet from public view, and you have an electric mix. Watch the film in French with subtitles, please: only the original French conveys the cynical boredom of Jill (Bardot's character) and the paparazzi who swarm around her. And watch it also for Henri Decae's camera -- how it jumps from face to floor, cropping a doorway so that Bardot fills it, for example! -- and for Bernard Evein's glorious saturated colors. And the account of the Verdi Requiem at the Spoleto Festival makes a nice counterpoint to Jill's mundane existence with Fabio (Mastroianni). Oh -- the 'difference' mentioned in the French title is that without the 'La' ('the') vie privee carries a suggestion of 'a deprived life' as well as 'a private life.' Compare to the American version, called 'A Very Private Affair'!