Guendalina

Jacqueline Sassard had an atypical career : "Guendalina " was her debut and she gave up on acting just ten years after , and much to her fans ' surprise , after two important works :Losey 's "accident" and Chabrol's "les biches" ;she had said that if the latter was a success,she would call it a day because she wanted to end her career on an "idyllic note" ;she passed away last year , and one has never seen her getting old on the screen .....

......which is fine with me,because she's one of the most beautiful girls of the French cinema -though her career was mainly Italian-;her eyes and her long eyelashes ,she 's eye candy ; the French long-haired Audrey Hepburn indeed!

-"Guendalina is part valid psychological drama part soap opera ; it owes a lot to the principal which has plenty of go and makes her portrayal less derivative than it appears at first sight :the spoilt young girl who's got everything (who cares for your transistor ? -it was 1957- daddy gives me all that I want !) but whose parents' marriage is on the rocks.

A daddy (the great Raf Vallone ) she's certainly in love with ;the final sequence ,when she cries her heart out,is it for her boyfriend? Or is it because dad fell for mom again?

Statuesque SIlva Koscina as mom is totally miscast ;check her date of birth :she's only seven years Sassard 's senior!

There's an interesting sharp contrast between Guendalina's high bourgeois dwelling and her boyfriend's modest flat ; the raincoat is symbolic -for his mother , it's a great loss,much to his humiliation -and plays a prominent part till the very end ;it's the vital lead between the world where you can take everything for granted and the working class milieu where you have to work hard to secure your future (the exam ,which oddly concerns only history and geography ,is an easy way out though).

It's strange to see bourgeois Sassard (whose birthday gift is a tape recorder, in 1957!) enter a less privileged word; in her final movie ,"les biches" ,it's the other way about :a girl who draws does (=biches) on the sidewalk enters the wealthy word of Chabrol's bourgeoisie .

Set in Viareggio an Italian famous tourist place, this movie is a gentle comedy where we admire a beautiful and remarkable debutant, Jacqueline Sassard supported by a good swarm of actors, the italian sex symbol of that moment Raf Vallone, Sylva Koscina and the young Raffaele Mattioli, all directed with steady hand by Alberto Lattuada. Based on a subject of Valerio Zurlini, the movie well screenplayd tells the transformation of a young and spoilt rich girl that discovers the substance of the sentiments in a period where she lives the drama of her parents divorce and the delights of love. The love story is showed in a very delicate way, such as the adolescence stories told in "Le blé en herbe (1954)" by Claude Autant Lara, and it is built with a great crescendo untill the nostalgic final.

When I first watched this film, I was shocked as hit by lightening and captivated instantly by the charm and beauty of Guendalina. Many scenes were printed in my brain and are still there vividly even now half a century later - such as the scene Guendalina appears in all-in-one tights dancing in front of Oberdan. After the release of this film, many girls rushed to shops to buy Jacqueline-Tights in Japan. The story is just a bittersweet memory of vacances but this film is one of the most impressive films I've ever seen due to the overpowering charms of Guendalina. I've been looking for the video or DVD of this film for many years, in vain. It is really incredible! But rumour has it that this film was TV broadcasted in Italy a few years ago and I dream of the day I have DVD of this film in my hand. If my memory is correct, I saw a report that Oberban (Raffaele Mattioli) died very young. I always thank God who led me to see Guendalina - Jacqueline Sassard - when I was as young as her.

This film is going in my all-time Top 50.

The film works as a bittersweet fantasy of youth. And who hasn't known a girl like this, at least in imagination? So beautiful she can get whatever she wants, vibrant and energetic, entitled and narcissistic but warm and charming - a real challenge for any young man, but the experience would be the stuff of life.

There are many delightful and amusing moments, from the shot of the cyclists at the beginning - focussing on female legs. To mention a few more: the avant-garde dance wearing a catsuit (presumably Guendalina's homage to Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face", though curiously, both these films were released within the same week in Italy); Guendalina with the kitten; the emotional scene at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa; the frequent calling out of Guenadlina's unusual name (a witty feature); the melancholy tone of the scene with the prostitute; the open-air cinema in the rain; the child testing her new hearing aid; the girl's father in his stunning sports car; the boy's pleasantly fussing mother and sister; Guendalina washing in the sea after falling in the dirty creek; riding backwards on the top of the bus at night; the train scene - an absolute classic of its kind; the amusing to-and-fro of the raincoat which binds the story together.

Then there's the ultra-stylish mother - check those glasses frames, the tight outfits, the way she moves - Sylva Koscina manages to steal every scene even from Sassard, such as when the telegram arrives, and when she's asleep on the couch. Lattuada makes every scene land, crisp and fine.

I'm sure there's even more to it than all this - I'm looking forward to watching it again some time in future.

I am sorry but this movie,which I looked for quite a lot of time, turned into a complete disappointment for me. The plot is weak, poor, even banal. Anyway, the character of Guendalina is wonderfully played by young Jaqueline Sassard and this only justifies my four stars. It seems like the whole movie were created only in order to evaluate and underscore the young actress's talent. On the contrary, the other characters are little more than clichés: Guendalina's father -the usual, handsome woman chaser- , her mother, a beautiful unsatisfied woman, and the pathetic boyfriend, too stupid to capture any empathy from the viewer. What particularly disappointed me is the representation of the scenery. A poor and insignificant photography gives no idea of the emotions that the Versilian landscape was used to communicate to poets, artists and especially painters, such as Boecklin and Carrà. And please...at the end of the movie we are informed that the location is Viareggio. But all the shots at the seaside are taken in Forte dei Marmi, a place which is famous for its magic light, also in Autumn and Winter. Where did that stunning light go?