Le repos du guerrier

A young woman named Genevieve Le Theil (Brigitte Bardot) while on a trip to Dijon to claim an inheritance accidentally opens the wrong hotel door and finds a man named Renaud Sarti (Robert Hossein) lying unconscious on a bed. He has attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Her intervention saves his life.

One would think he would be grateful and perhaps fall in love with his beautiful benefactress. What happens is just the opposite. She falls into a kind of obsessive, almost masochistic, love with him, but all he feels for her is indifference. He spends her money, drinks to excess, abuses her verbally and emotionally. But she can't let him go regardless of what he does. Yes, this is a familiar premise, and frankly I would not have stuck around long enough to see how it plays out except for Brigitte Bardot.

If you haven't seen her, you might want to watch this just to take a look at her. She is strikingly beautiful and amazingly sexy. She has pretty, almost perfect features and a soft and sweet way about her; but perhaps the most arresting thing about her is her figure. It is absolutely exquisite. She was a sensation in the fifties not only in France but in the US as the quintessence of the "sex kitten," in some ways even more so than, say, Marilyn Monroe or Tuesday Weld.

Roger Vadim, who would later direct Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968) was married to Bardot at the time this movie was made. (He would later marry Jane Fonda.) Like some other French directors, Vadim liked to make movies which amounted to adorations of the beautiful young star. See Roman Polanski with, e.g., Nastassja Kinski in Tess (1979); Krzysztof Kieslowski with Irene Jacob in La Double vie de Véronique (1991) and Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994); and Andre Techine, with Juliette Binoche in Rendez-vous (1985) for some comparisons. Naturally if you make movies in which the camera adores the young actress and shows her in her best light, you are going to attract young actresses! Here Vadim directs in a studied manner designed to not only show off Bardot's exquisite beauty but to highlight her ability as an actress. Although not among the first rank as actresses go, Bardot performs well here. Perhaps this is her best film. She is elegantly dressed and coiffured, and Vadim treats us to many close ups of her lovely face. (If there is a more beautiful woman in filmdom, I haven't seen her.) But don't expect to see much of her equally lovely body or any kinky sex. This film could easily pass for PG-13.

Vadim creates an early sixties French atmosphere as he recalls the jazz/beat scene from that era, but he does so in a superficial, almost euphemistic way. In the elaborate scenes at Katov's apartment and then at his estate, we are given a hint of the decadent indulgence of a certain class of French society in which privilege, jazz, heroin, pot and easy sex are the rule, but Vadim keeps it all off camera except for one scene in which a joint is passed around.

Vadim's most famous film starring Brigitte Bardot is Et Dieu... créa la femme (And God Created Woman) (1956). This is not to be confused with Vadim's American version of the film from 1988 starring Rebecca De Mornay, which was not very good.

Bardot retired fairly young and devoted her life to helping animals.

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This film seems like more than just a film, it looks and feels like what it would have really have been like to have Brigitte Bardot as your companion in life, for better and for a lot worse, as relationships go. Qualities such as loyalty, caring, warmth, tenderness, understanding, devotion, etc. endlessly flow from her to her suicidal, live-in lover, as time and again she brings him back from the depths of despair and self-destruction, to temporary recovery in her arms.

All this, however, serves to make him even more miserable, in the best masochistic tradition, as he falls even more deeply into his alcoholic albatross, rather than face real life responsibility as a sober, productive man with a good woman by his side.

Bardot exudes the utmost maturity and restraint in taking the best cheap shots this ungrateful con-artist, female user, and abusive man (Robert Hossein, in an outstanding interpretation of a difficult role) can dump on her. The problem here is universal in scope in that it portrays two people who are physically attracted to each other, to the point of addiction, while at the same time a classic mis-match from a values and a psychological perspective. "You always hurt the one you love," was never more in evidence than for the 102 emotion-draining minutes of this film. Clearly a Vadim masterpiece, and a triumphant collaboration with Bardot, long after their real-life divorce and her remarriage. This represents "professionalism" to the highest degree.

The title of my review ought to be enough to scare off the folks who are expecting a plot-driven, digestible story. You'll get none of that here.

Although there is indeed a plot (a rather interesting one, if you ask me), the power of this film lies not in the story but in the script and in the subtle, almost indecipherable fragments of philosophy we experience through these two highly complex characters.

Geneviève (Bardot) is the the romantic. Her counterpart Renaud (Hossein) is the cynic. The collision of their worlds causes a catastrophic upheaval in both of their lives. But it is undeniable that they need each other, just as the two opposing philosophies rely on each other. Sort of a yin-yang thing. At times they are at war with each other; at times they cling to each other for life; at times they threaten to annihilate the other absolutely. This is some really heavy stuff that cannot possibly be summarized in a few paragraphs, so I won't even try.

There are several monologues which are so stirring I want to learn them by heart. Particularly the last two speeches in the final 10 mins of the film. Pay close attention to those words, because they sum up the entire theme of the film. Powerful. Powerful.

'Le repos du guerrier' is characterized by its mood. A slow, laid-back, not to say inert mood. Getting into it is an absolute condition to appreciate this movie, I think. Otherwise watching will be very boring.

However, I detected one scene that may unite appreciators and non-appreciators. Its jazz-tune, somewhere halfway this movie, really is very good.

All in all a movie with an unususal thin story, even for Bardot-standards. That may be inspired by the Italian Fellini/Antonioni-movies, whcih were very fashionable in 1962. If 'repos' provides us with any theme, it's about the battle of the sexes. Brigitte comes out victorious: a foregone conclusion, given the nitwit-character of her male counterpart.

While their short-lived marriage was long gone, this is the fourth of five Roger Vadim/Brigitte Bardot collaborations and only the second I've watched myself. After opening in a light comedy vein, this rather scrappy film turns into an unappetizingly ponderous melodrama on the lines of LA DOLCE VITA (1960), complete with a risibly "beat" orgy sequence and a surfeit of pretentious chat; nevertheless, the whole is somewhat redeemed by the attractive Italian locations in its second half and the nice musical score throughout.

For what it's worth, it tells of a bourgeois girl (Bardot) – shortly to be married to an unassuming young man – travelling from Paris to Dijon to hear the will of her late aunt, who accidentally stumbles on the suicide attempt of a bohemian, pulp-thriller-loving misanthrope (Robert Hossein) who, upon recovering, literally turns her life upside down. The cast is completed by James Robertson Justice (as Hossein's sculptor friend), Macha Meril (as Robertson's tramp companion) and, in one sequence, Michel Serrault as a notary.

In the end, the original title of THE WARRIOR'S REST sounds far more interesting that what's on offer here and the fact that I was misinformed about the film's running time – I thought it was a good 22 minutes shorter! – did not help to earn it much affection from my end. But, then, the sight of Bardot in her prime (and, Vadim being Vadim, in various stages of undress as well) is always welcome...