Un été à Saint-Tropez

There is no more beautiful sight on God's green earth, than a nubile young female and I make no excuses for enjoying looking at them. David Hamilton has had a terrific life photographing girls. I have seen his other work and a lot of it is to be admired, this film though, isn't very good.(At least my copy of the DVD.)It is dated 1984 but appears to be shot in the seventies, grainy and faded with bad sound. Bright sunlight is difficult to 'shoot' in but half the time I found it hard to see anything clearly. (Bilitis is also shot in sunlight yet is fine, all is sharp.)So be warned, if you wish to spend sixty minutes hoping to see sharp clear images of young girls disporting themselves on beaches, this film isn't it!

The usual rap on French director David Hamilton is that he is a "pervert". Give me a break--if every man who still felt some twinge of attraction to girls this age (16-20 years old) were to drop dead tomorrow, only the most committed homosexuals would be left to re-populate the earth. This is a French movie so many of the actresses here may not be "legal" by American standards. But if "perverts" (and by that I mean men) really want to fantasize about barely underage high school girls, they can watch an innocuous 1980's French nudie movie like this and really use their imagination to create sexual scenarios, or they can get an American-made "barely legal" hardcore porn flick where a young-looking eighteen year old in pig-tails and a school uniform gets gang-sodomized and triple-penetrated and they only have to pretend she's a year or two younger. Which do you think is more harmful to society?

But the problem I have with David Hamilton is that if it were possible to fall asleep with an erection, his movies could no doubt induce it. They are languorously slow-paced even by French standards. They are like still photography (which was Hamilton's principal career) at 24 frames a second. Unlike "Bilitis", this movies makes no effort to have a plot or drama (which might be for the best if you've seen "Bilitis"). It's basically just endless shots of a gaggle of young French nymphs sleeping (often in nude), showering, skinny-dipping, sunbathing (usually naked), fixing each others hair (in various states of undress), or having topless, slow-motion pillow fights. But it's all a lot more boring than it sounds.

I can't really fault Hamilton's photography, but he REALLY overuses the soft-focus (at times I wanted to grab his camera, wipe all the vaseline off the lens, and pull the damn focus!). I CAN definitely fault his taste in music. I had to laugh at an earlier reviewer who said this movie could be used to treat sex offenders. It IS kind of like the "ludvico technique" in "A Clockwork Orange" in that you have this footage of tantalizing naked nubiles juxtaposed with truly nausea-inducing music (although at least you don't have the banal dialogue of "Bilitis"--there's no dialogue at all actually, just a lot of giggling). Sure, this would probably work on sex offenders, but it would doubtlessly work on normal "perverts" too--not to mention guys like me, who of course only watched this disgusting filth to see the lush St. Tropez scenery--and now it's ruined forever (Damn you, David Hamilton!)

This is straight up one of David Hamilton's famous photobooks but shot as a movie. There is no story. And we don't ever get to see Saint Tropez. Pretty and slim girls frolick around in various combinations and situations, and it's sexy and esthetic. If I remember correctly, we get to see nipples, and that's it. And it's over all too soon in under one hour.

One think that always strikes me about David Hamilton is that I guess this is the way a girl or young woman would like to be presented in an erotic manner. Sexy but tastefully.

David Hamilton's earlier movies used to tell a story. I don't know why he gave it up. In 1983 he made two movies with financial backing from Germany, Un été à Saint Tropez and Premiers désirs, and both don't offer much in the way of a storyline.

David Hamilton got it right in his last film (so far) when he omitted the plot and dialogue and focused on what he does better than anyone else - photography of scantily clad late teenage girls on the brink of womanhood. "Not a girl, not yet a woman" embodied in this film.

Although the theme carries the film, the apparently detached scenes have a fitting conclusion in the end.

The film is clearly a photographer's work. Whether we are treated with a picture of fields in early morning mist, a girl washing her hair or just her sleeping, these are professionally set-up compositions to look like a photograph. Hamilton uses soft focus everywhere, (the film is not meant to be an example of high definition cinema at all, although I'm sure the film print I saw was much better than the previous reviewer's experience) creating a hazy, dreamy look on everything and the color contrasts between the more or less tanned girls, their clothes and surroundings accentuate the sensuality of the girls and the situations between them. Many times the camera and subjects are still for long periods of time or the camera pans slowly through the scene, reminding me in some weird way of some of the works of Andrei Tarkovsky..! Hamilton even uses still photos a couple of times for no reason at all, being somewhat of a letdown for me.

The sound quality was fine and the simple piano/synth music was MOST of the time unobtrusive and supported the action on screen.

The subject is not only a male fantasy, but also a very innocent look into a girls' fantasy world as well: a worry-free perpetual Indian summer filled with sunny days and gentle breezes, flower garlands, auburn sunsets, skinny dipping without a hint of self-consciousness, ballet training and horseback riding, a touch of clumsy boys and playful sensuality (not sexuality!) amongst the girls - all done in a very tasteful manner and utmost respect at the subjects without exploiting them.

Hamilton has done a fine job directing the girls to behave in their natural feminine way without much pretense. The girls are highly photogenic when they appear to gaze into nothingness, apparently deep in their thoughts.

I cannot imagine anyone doing films like these anymore.

...for three reasons. One is that the girls involved seem a year or so older than usual, with the result that their bodies are more curved, and the film seems less like "child porn". Second, he uses the south of France for good advantage in this one.

Finally, and most importantly, this is a dialog-less, almost plotless film. So one can gaze at the young, sun-lit European bodies without ever once being subjected to the howlingly awful lines that afflicted "Tendres Cousins" and "Bilitis" from opening titles to final credits.