The series Bardot ends with a curious disclaimer: “Jacques Charrier and his son won the lawsuit against Brigitte Bardot over how she portrayed their relationship and her pregnancy.” What do the series makers mean by that? Just google it: the ex-husband and only son of the French film star Brigitte Bardot filed a lawsuit against her in 1996 because her recently published autobiography violated their privacy. Bardot had to pay damages. However, the judge did not deprive her of the right to tell her life story the way she wanted.
But what does that have to do with Bardot, the new drama series of the French public broadcaster? That lawsuit has no effect on this drama series, does it? Is this intended to prevent any new lawsuits? The series broadly tells the story as Bardot told it, albeit toned down. She hated being pregnant and having a child, she hardly looked after her baby and after the divorce gave custody to her ex. Bardot and her ex both come off badly in the series: they held each other captive, tried to thwart each other’s careers. However, the abuse by the ex-husband is trivialized into one blow, which is also more or less accidental.
That late Bardot sometimes glimpses of what a captivating series this could have been.
A free-spirited, defiant beauty who openly expressed her sexuality, Brigitte Bardot epitomized the sexual revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. She was Marilyn Monroe’s European counterpart, but with loose hair and bare feet. Even the French existentialists and feminists loved her. Bardot stood for the new freedom of post-war youth – a freedom she had to fight for in the French male world. First she broke away from her conservative wealthy family, then she had to fight for her place in the film world, which mainly wanted to use her as a ‘sex bomb’. Men fell in love with her and then dismissed her as ‘dissolute’. They couldn’t see her as a full-fledged human being. Bardot capitalized on her appeal and her fame, but they also made her a prisoner, especially because of the pushy, moralistic tabloid press that followed her around the clock.
Bloody serious melodrama
Beautiful, strong woman caught in a man’s world – a fascinating story, especially looking back through today’s feminist glasses. But this series opts for the romance, filmed in a chic-looking, nostalgic style reminiscent of the French light comedies Brigitte Bardot excelled at. Except that Bardot not light or comical at all. This is dead serious melodrama.
The series follows Brigitte Bardot in the first ten years of her film career from the 1949 audition where she meets twenty-year-old filmmaker Roger Vadim. As a fifteen-year-old child model, she immediately gets into a relationship with Vadim, who would marry her three years later and direct her breakthrough film: Et Dieu… créa la femme (1956). Hmm, sex with a fifteen year old? In the series, only Bardot’s narrow-minded parents make a fuss about it. The series makers apparently think it’s fine.
What follows is a long-winded series of romances, in an endless cycle of kissing, sex, cheating, fighting, suicide attempt, and on to the next. Under all the attention and love, Bardot remains lonely and unstable – just like Monroe. The ongoing siege of press photographers is described oppressively. A chase by paparazzi on scooters is reminiscent of Lady Di’s end in a Parisian tunnel.
Cliches
But how boring and superficial all this is. Strange that French filmmakers can get so many clichés about France and about love in a row. It looks like a photo novel. Bardot is flattened into a spoiled child with a grumpy pout who keeps thwarting her own happiness in life. The real Bardot can be a hateful bitch – she was repeatedly convicted of racist speech in her later life, for example – but she’s a lot more engaging than how she’s portrayed here.
That is not due to her interpreter, the 23-year-old debutante Julia de Nunez. He bears a striking resemblance to Bardot and throws himself into the role with a lot of passion and emotions, giving you a glimpse of the powerful appearance that the real Bardot once had. But also De Nunez cannot convincingly lisp „Je t’aime” for the twentieth time against an opponent who is soon replaced.
The series culminates in the birth of Bardot’s son in 1960, her postpartum depression, and her fourth suicide attempt on her 26th birthday. Apparently the series makers thought that was too depressing, so in the last shot we see Bardot smiling nicely with a kitten in her arms.