Cannabis

Cannabis or 'French Intrigue' as it was called on the North American video release is a low budget film with not much to see in it besides a naked Jane Birkin getting it on. Serge Gainsbourg Smoking one cigarette after another plays a unshaven, hoodlum involved with a international drug smuggling conspiracy. Jane Birkin is a girl Serge meets on a air-plane, and nudity ensue, not Gainsbourg though which is a scary proposition seeing him in that Lemon incest video. Another memorable scene is Serge in a huge Chicken coupe shooting it out with other baddies. Soundtrack is by Gainsbourg and is very cool as with everything the man did.

Jane Birkin is supposed to be this girl from a good background but we know it just because the cop (Gabrielle "Avventura" Ferzetti) tells us so.

The film was produced by Andrée Debar ,an actress of the fifties who had a strange androgynous look.Why she stopped acting remains a mystery as why Serge Gainsbourg stopped singing and writing to play such a poor part in a hackneyed movie.At least he wrote the score and the cast and credits song,which are much too good for a director who leaves his actors to their own devices.

"This is not a movie about drugs " a line reads at the beginning ;it's a love film,an action-packed film...As far as the love film is concerned ,we have good-looking Jane Birkin naked every ten minutes;as for the action,highlights are ,so to speak,a chase on the roof of the opera -without a phantom- and a massacre in a chicken farm.

"Cannabis " is a relic of the late sixties,which would be forgotten,weren't it for the legendary Birkin/Gainsbourg lovers who fortunately knew better times.

They made a lots of crime movies like this in the 60's. The script (if there is any) hasn't given much thought and is full of holes. The characters are empty and stupid, there are always drugs involved and at least one party scene full of grass smoking messed up hippies. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg spend most of the time kissing and touching each other while the other "gangster" is just fooling around. From time to time, police is trying to catch them with zero results. Acting is bad and the dialog is ridiculous. However, there are still some nice shots in it and the soundtrack (composed by Gainsbourg) is fantastic and that is a reason enough to check out this piece of crap.

I read the French novel from which this film is inspired. Lousy but pleasant book, and so easily flexible in terms of adaptation that I hardly understand such a result on screen. A mobster from New York arrives in France and is charged to replace an important drug traffic ring. You see, some kind of JOHNNY COOL - the film starring Henry Silva - topic, which would have been great. But no, this garbage seems to be a Nouvelle Vague material, Jean Luc Godard like crap, especially speaking of the writing, the story, so silly. The directing is not so bad though and the main interest is for sure the couple Serge Gainsbourg - Jane Birkin.

This movie had a lot of potential: a great cast including Curd Juergens, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, and outstanding qualities in cinematography and editing. I have seen few films with so many intense close-ups and surprising cuts. Unfortunately, the movie has no story to tell. It is just another gangster movie with everybody being everybody else's enemy. "Cannabis" could have become a weird, more outrageous, experimental and revolutionary version of Melville's "Le Samourai", but the movie ends up as a failure, albeit a visually stunning one.