Le baiser papillon

Harold Fine (Peter Sellers) is an uptight lawyer, a member of the Establishment. His longtime girlfriend Joyce finally has pinned Harold down on a wedding date, and his life seems to be settling down. But wait! Harold meets Nancy, a friend of his hippie brother, at a family funeral. Turned on by her free thinking, free loving, and free living, Harold leaves Joyce at the altar to be with Nancy. He drops out of society and into hippiedom! Sellers isn't the most likely person to play this role, but he's very good in it. Leigh Taylor-Young, as Nancy, is positively ravishing. The movie takes you back to the late sixties, even if you've never been there. All the sights and sounds are lovingly created by director Hy Averback. And the script! Nearly every aspect of counterculture society in the late sixties is covered, and there's hardly a stagnant scene. In particular, the wild parties at Harold's apartment and the scene where the policeman come upon Harold and Nancy in the backseat of his car are real gems.

One of the best comedies of the 1960s and one of the most subversive as well...it's difficult to believe that Warner Bros. released I LOVE YOU ALICE B. TOKLAS. Peter Sellers, in his most American role, plays Harold Fine, an uptight mama's boy putting off any commitment to girlfriend Joyce Van Patten. He falls head over heels for free-spirited Leigh Taylor Young and all hell breaks loose. Sellers is brilliant, Van Patten is pretty funny, and Taylor-Young is striking. The movie is nearly stolen by Jo Van Fleet as Sellers mother, a shrike to be sure, and hysterical eating a "special" brownie. She's priceless...once again giving a great performance as a character of a substantially more advanced age...she was 54 playing 43 year old Sellers mother! Hy Averback's direction is clever and the film is filled with a lot of funny gags...a highlight is Sellers and crew driving ALL OVER Los Angeles in search of a funeral.

Screenwriters Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker have a deft idea here--but it only takes an hour on the clock to use up the essence of their idea, leaving nothing but dead space on the screen for thirty more minutes. Milquetoast Jewish lawyer in Los Angeles, about to marry his domineering secretary (an idea which is approved by his demonstrative mother), is reunited with his estranged brother, a flower-child circa 1968. Through the brother's sometime-girlfriend, a comely lass who knows a great recipe for hash brownies, the lawyer realizes he's living an existence without love or freedom. It's wonderful watching bespectacled, buttoned-up Peter Sellers learn how to be liberated...yet, once the lawyer grows his hair out and dons love beads, the picture has nowhere in particular to take us. The satire is unsubtle in its prodding of targets, while writers Mazursky and Tucker ultimately bite off more than they can chew (while leaning precariously on pretentiousness). Still, there are some mild, breezy laughs early on, and the production is bright. ** from ****

I was born 8 years after this film came out, so I'm a little out of touch with the generation. BUT! Look closely at this film. Sure, it stereotypes hippies and seems a bit out of date. What this film really is becomes a search for one man (Petter Sellers) to find out who he is, and to avoid the traps of life that he suddenly sees as conventional. As Harold Fine, he questions what life and marriage have to offer and he seeks to discover what else is out there. The pot brownie sequence opens up his world to new dimensions, he breaks off his marriage to be with a hippie chick, he drops out, he tries to free himself. Do I relate to Harold Fine? Heck yes! The film mirrors much of Peter Seller's life himself, confunsed, unsure, searching. The scene with his guru cracks me up- Sellers face is priceless as he tries to stop trying and learn who he is.

This film deserves a lot more attention then what it receives. This isn't just a time capsule into the dropout 60s world- it's a good time capsule into soul searching.

This is a very funny send up of the flower child generation. Peter Sellers plays an uptight, Jewish lawyer who falls for one of his hippie brother's girlfriends. After that, he descends into hippiedom. The film is filled with some of the funniest scenes around. The funniest part of the movie is Sellers as a hippie with hair down around his cheeks and psychedelic clothing, but still wearing horn-rimmed glasses. The musical score, which uses sitars as satire, is really great, too. It's very much worth seeing, although it overstays its welcome. Its humorous observations (and imaginations) about hippies get a bit repetitive in the film's second half. 8/10.