Saint Tropez Blues

The Nouvelle Vague in all its horror!

Take a trendy place (is there a hipper place than Saint Trop'?),beautiful young people (although a long-haired Marie Laforet is much more attractive ),who on holiday have nothing to do but contemplate their navel ,and a very serious existentialist concern:will Anne-Marie join the pack's degenerate ways and lose her precious virginity?The unfortunate girl is still dreaming of a romantic love at the dawn of sexual "liberation".

Apart from this,there's no screenplay at all and ,except for maybe sociologists and die-hard highbrows,nothing to attract people who like being told a story.

Marie Laforêt had starred just before in the classic thriller "Plein Soleil" aka "purple noon" and you'd better choose René Clément 's work instead if you do not want French cinema to make you run away;while continuing her actress career,Laforêt became a "folk" Chanteuse covering songs such as "go tell it on the mountain" or "no charge" .

Jacques Higelin ,who plays her boyfriend ,was essentially a singer,but unlike Laforêt ,a creative one.

As for me ,my only reward for watching such a dud is to see Claude Chabrol in a cameo (a tongue-in-cheek interview) and his favorite actress/soon-to-be-wife Stephane Audran as a macho painter's lover.