Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman

Brigitte Bardot stars here in her last film along with Jane Birkin, the other singer who recorded the Serge Gainesbourg hit, "Je t'aime". This film is worth seeing, as we see BB's and Vadim's evolution from "And God Created Woman" to this post-sixties over-the-top comedy-drama.

We get some great nude scenes with Brigitte and Jane, and BB's character Jeanne is someone fed up with men, so she resorts to seduce and destroy tactics. As in "And God Created Woman" she's pretty much playing herself, but with an exaggerated storyline of driving men to ruin, murder, and suicide. The campy ironic humor is there in such scenarios as seducing a priest as well as setting up a fake menage-a-trois to madden a bete homme. Also a scene with Robert Walker Jr. (Charlie X in Star Trek TOS) where the price she asks for making love is no less than his life, which he takes seriously. The ending is a multiple meaning one as BB saves a man who makes her "pay for her sins" (though he's unappreciative). I think the end hits home for Brigitte in real life saying in effect, "look you male-dominated world, you've made my life hell". And it's the last scene she ever did on film. Worth seeing for it's erotic quality (but what BB film isn't), the submarine home, the early '70s fashions, and the camp.

Some reviewers seem not to notice the golden irony that BB, who was ready to quit acting without needing a swansong, chose a vehicle, the value of which she could not fail to comprehend, in which men commit suicide after making love to BB. She is natural and resigned to the penultimate finale of her career. Maurice Ronet acquits himself perfectly as the torn antihero. He is the perfect foil to her underplayed and subtle excesses. This film didn't need any association with Don Juan to work more than adequately on several levels. Not only does it excel in irony but also in theatrical sarcasm with the 'God created woman' embroiled in a hellish inferno in a finale of post-modern design, her nemesis entombed in what might be an analogy for shifting sands. I feel that, in life, she was always lost, this belief reinforced when we exchanged pleasantries in Cannes in 1969.

Or if Don Juan Were A Woman In Modern Paris, if you would, and played by Brigitte Bardot, for her ex-husband Roger Vadim. I am uncertain what, if anything, Vadim was attempting to say; the mythical womanizer does not seem to gain anything by making him a woman, except for making the point that women have sexual appetites too. By the time this came out, Vadim's saucy and risque attitudes, which had been revolutionary in the 1950s, had become commonplace, even a bit dated. The only remaining point is that women could be sexual predators, just as much as men. To which I say: okay.

Vadim uses a slightly bleached color pallette for this movie, indicating to me that there is a limit to the pleasures of the body. Everything palls, after a while, and satiety does not satisfy. Or perhaps I am just an old man whose understanding of the legend is a little too secure.

Brigitte Bardot must have had a very strong personality to make "and God created woman" the smash hit it was at the end of the fifties.Vadim/Bardot,it's Pygmalion in reverse :an actress who had un petit je ne sais quoi who created the worst director of the whole nouvelle vague.Vadim made half a dozen of movies with BB,each one lousier than the one before.This one takes the biscuit:not only a good cast is wasted (Robert Hossein,Matthieu Carrière,Maurice Ronet,Jane Birkin)but most of the time ,the movie and BB's lines are unintentionally funny:how can we take seriously this priest ,BB's cousin?the macho Hossein and his wife who discovers Sapphic pleasures with Jeanne/Don Juan?

One cannot even call this farce "woman's lib" because Jeanne is chastised for having been a bad gal,like the true Don Juan.

NB:It's BB last real film;afterwards,she was to appear in a small part in "l'histoire très bonne et très joyeuse de Colinot Trousse-Chemise"(1973),which, in spite of its title ,was neither "très bonne" nor "très joyeuse".Then it was silence.Outside Garbo ,there's no other example of an actress ,still young (BB was 39),who calls it quits at such an early age.She became an animal rights activist -and still is-.

A veritable orgy of campy decor and even campier dialogue ("If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being treated the way I treat other people!") this would-be erotic extravaganza stars an ageing and puffy Brigitte Bardot as a jet-set nymphomaniac - who fancies herself a reincarnation of the 16th century Spanish seducer. Both the film and its heroine labour under the delusion of being a whole lot sexier than they really are.

The "plot" (I use the term loosely) involves Bardot confessing to a dishy priest (Mathieu Carriere) how she drove one of her lovers to suicide. Half an hour into this mess, and you'll know how the poor b**tard felt. Undaunted by the tedium around her, Bardot seduces a married lawyer (Maurice Ronet) and they jet off to Sweden, supposed Paradise of Free Love. (Never mind if the Bacchanalian revels we SEE are no more steamy than your average Sunday school picnic.)

On a boat train to London, Bardot enjoys a lesbian frolic with the young and nubile wife (Jane Birkin) of a sleazy gangster (Robert Hossein). How the sight of Bardot and Birkin, nude in bed together, could be turned into such a non-event is still beyond me. No matter. Bardot sets her insatiable sights on a hippie musician played by Robert Walker, Jr. Yes, he's the son of Bruno from Strangers on a Train and 40s icon Jennifer Jones...although talent HAS been known to skip a generation.

Granted, Don Juan '73 is an abysmal movie, but there is fun to be had. Birkin looks heart-meltingly gorgeous and Ronet even tries to do some acting - though why he should bother when nobody else does is one of life's mysteries. Anyone who shares my weakness for bouffant hairdos, zebra-skin rugs and purple velvet flares will probably enjoy it. Still, the final impression is of Vadim, after 15 years as a high-style provocateur, struggling to keep up with a Flower Power audience. Is there any sight sadder than hipster who's been out-hipped?

David Melville