Customer Reviews

Love on a Pillow [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The beauty of Bardot is horribly marred by the poor picture quality of this film. The color is so screwed that the film appears to be in yellow.
No special features are offered on this DVD. It contains english dubbing which I think is fine because I prefer to watch dubbed foreign films anyway.
Since this is the only version of the film on DVD, I settled for what I could get.

This film amazed me. I was sad to see that the transfer of this DVD is virtually washed out of color, but then again, there has never been any problem with black & white film has there? There is some very solid direction from Vadim, plus great acting from Bardot and Robert Hossein. The story takes place in the great European period of the 1960's where tragic love stories reign better than they ever have. Give me this over any American romantic comedy anyday (And technically this is a true romantic comedy in light of the story structure and the ending in particular; it's just the superior European take on the genre). If you love this time period as conveyed through film, and like Bardot, this is a definite addition to add to your library!

I saw a clear version of this movie under its French title Le Repos Du Guerrier. The movie had English subtitles.

Bardot looks absolutely beautiful throughout this entire movie. Her acting is also incredibly good. She expresses a wide range of emotions (love, dispair, heartbreak, frustration, anger) very convincingly.

By accident Bardot saves the life of a man (Robert Hossein) who tries to commit suicide. She befriends this pathetic creature and soon falls in love with him. They become lovers as Bardot breaks off her engagement to another man. Her new lover is both odd and mysterious. He loves Bardot but doesn't want to give himself to her completely.

When Bardot finally leaves him, he becomes a lost soul. He can't live without her. He finds Bardot and asks her to marry him. She embraces him warmly.

I believe this movie was well made and appeals to a certain audience but it was simply too slow and soap-opera like for my taste.

THIS is an extraordinary film..the entire picture looks jaundiced that it might perhaps be better off described as black&yellow rather than colour. That aside this is the dubbed version, something I never really liked in a film, the stars' lips were obviously out of sync with the dialogue and the plot incredibly shallow and bland ( though I suspect it was intended to convey some profound message...but what?). Bardot saves a man's life and falls for this sad character...well love is truly blind here and in the process dumps her fiancee and starts avoiding her mother. Finally if I was not a Bardot fan I would not have sat through this....my eyes were sore afterwards.

A young woman named Genevieve Le Theil (Brigitte Bardot) while on a trip to Dijon to claim an inheritance accidently 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.

Bardot, Bardot, Bardot. In the 1950's and 60's, this name would garauntee box office success. Unfortunately, this is the new millenium and there is little in this film to amuse viewers. First, the quality of the print used to make this video was so washed out that the film looks like monochrome. Secondly, Bardot, while sexy, does little to enhance this slow tale of a young women fighting the age old battle of the sexes with a drifter she picks up and brings home. Nudity, don't count on it. You'll get more on modern daytime soaps. If you just have to have more Bardot in you collection, OK, buy it. If your looking for entertainment, forget it.

Vadim's films may be exploitations, but they are also contradictory narratives about his own life, his own power in discovering Brigitte Bardot ('And God created woman': modest, isn't he?) and emasculation in having her transcend and ultimately reject his influence. This film is typical. On the one hand it is an 'anti-bourgeois' (yawn) tale of a woman who leaves her dull husband, embraces sexual 'liberation' (i.e. hoovers in her birthday suit) and eventually masters her mean lover in an extended rite of psychological S&M. This is Bardot's narrative. On the other, Bardot is repeatedly stripped and humiliated for men (her lover; Vadim; the implied viewer), but shot in a fragmentary way that denies her even sexual power. This is Vadim's narrative. Guess which wins.

I noted several reviews about dubbing and how the colors were "yellow and washed out". The film was shown in French with English subtitles on TV5, the international French station, with fairly good color. Look for another edition.
(I haven't completed the movie as I write, my rating of 3 is simply because it is impossible to post this comment with out some rating)