Quelle desastre! Alain Berliner’s documentary on Brigitte Bardot, which traces her turbulent childhood in a straitlaced Catholic family, to becoming the ultimate French sex siren, to animal rights activist living in La Madrague, St. Tropez in her dotage, is an utter hagiography. You’d think she walked on water.
Rushing through her childhood , where we are informed she longed to become a ballerina, only to be rewarded by beatings from her father for her insolence and breaking a Chinese vase, we then get a solid forty minutes on how she liberated ALL women in France in the early sixties, as her famous style, pout and golden tresses were the epitome of male desire and female adulation. The whole “women wanted to be her, men wanted to be with her” adage is explored, ad infinitum. Talking heads like Naomi Campbell, Stella McCartney, Jane Birkin and various French cineastes laud her style, activism and refusal to be anything less than fearless. It’s revisionist nonsense: Bardot as feminist.
Yet Brigitte Bardot was homophobic, not a very talented actor or singer, dismissive of the #MeToo movement, and openly racist, with only one allusion near the end to her right-wing alliance with Marianne Le Pen, current leader of the French National Front.
Yes, she was fearless. Yes, she was totemic of a new independent spirit in Europe, post-World War 2. But only inasmuch as it earned her money. To be blunt, she was extremely limited in her appeal, which only lasted as long as her youthful beauty did. The “sex kitten” child- woman stereotype, which still persists today, as with the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega, is extremely problematic, yet never once challenged in this fairytale.
We’re told repeatedly here that she did everything on her own terms, but Bardot, forever linked with famous men (Roger Vadim, Alain Delon, Serge Gainsbourg, to name but a few) plays the victim multiple times, complaining of how she was constantly hounded by press and paparazzi, how nobody could ever treat her with respect, or see her as less than an object. It’s pretty rich, coming from a woman who wilfully objectified herself, starring in such films as ‘And God Created Woman’, ‘Mademoiselle Striptease’ and the overrated ‘Les Mepris’ where the camera endlessly ogles her naked form. She was never a Lady Macbeth or Hedda Gabler, as that requires range. Hearing her endlessly moan about how she wasn’t taken seriously is sort of pitiful, not to mention disingenuous.
It’s impossible to overstate how much good she did for animals, and by extension global environmental issues, but the film’s refusal to see her as anything other than saintly, is extremely bizarre. In essence, she’s Goldilocks nuzzling the three bears. C’est tout. Quelle dommage.
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