Don Juan or If Don Juan Were a Woman (1976)

To get it out of the way, I never believed that Roger Vadim created BB or vice versa. They were both products of a film era that needed urgently some sexual awakening with the difference that he was a not-so-hot writer-director while she was a force of nature waiting to unleash her power. And boy did she do it! Almost two decades after "Et Dieu... créa la femme" (1956) and after trying for years to replicate its success with BB stand-ins (Jane Fonda, Annette Stroyberg, Rebecca De Mornay, etc.) Vadim reunited with Bardot for what must have seemed (to them) a terrific idea: BB, the eternal seducer as Don Juan, the seducer par excellence. BB playing a stud? Not on your life! Her part is of a female seducer who thinks she was Don Juan on a previous incarnation. Really. I think all this Don Juan business is just an excuse to show some hanky panky between Bardot and Birkin since lesbian love scenes were very popular in the early 70s and Vadim gracefully obliged. After all, if he wanted to presume of remaining a cinema transgresseur, showing BB in a lesbian situation is not such a bad idea. However by 1973 Bardot was no longer BB, that half a child, half a woman that conquered the world. Mind you, her charm and personality was still there but her face showed the puffiness and lines of middle age in spite of being shot through filters and special lightning. Maybe the Don Juan concept could have worked better ten or fifteen years before but, if you are a Bardot follower, you know she did something very similar in Julien Duvivier´s "La femme et le pantin" (1959) filmed in Spain. I say "similar" because the story, although based on a novel by Pierre Louÿs, owes a lot to Prosper Mérimée' s "Carmen", that gypsy dame who plays with men' s emotions, a part that seem designed for BB who was then at the top of her powers as the ultimate seductress. Who is Carmen but a female version of Don Juan?In short this is a not-so-good-film that must be seen for several reasons. First of all because it marked the end of Bardot' s film career (she did another film in 1973 and that was it), also for the presence of two actors that are also true cinema legends, Maurice Ronet and Robert Hossein (both deserve better). Last but not least, some praise must go to the Eastmancolor cinematography by veteran cameraman Henri Decaë. The rest you can throw away, Vadim et all.

Some reviewers seem not to notice the golden irony that BB, who was ready to quit acting without needing a swansong, chose a vehicle, the value of which she could not fail to comprehend, in which men commit suicide after making love to BB. She is natural and resigned to the penultimate finale of her career. Maurice Ronet acquits himself perfectly as the torn antihero. He is the perfect foil to her underplayed and subtle excesses. This film didn't need any association with Don Juan to work more than adequately on several levels. Not only does it excel in irony but also in theatrical sarcasm with the 'God created woman' embroiled in a hellish inferno in a finale of post-modern design, her nemesis entombed in what might be an analogy for shifting sands. I feel that, in life, she was always lost, this belief reinforced when we exchanged pleasantries in Cannes in 1969.

Just after this film and a small part in one other, top screen star Brigitte Bardot retired from films at age 39. Perhaps she was just tired of the life, perhaps she was rich enough and more money held little attraction or perhaps appearing in crap like this film just took the joy out of the life of an actress. I suspect all three are quite likely reasons for this retirement--and you'd think an actress like her could have gotten roles better than this bilge! The film is, in many ways, like a porno film without much sex--with a plot that weak and silly. Bardot plays an impossible to believe and completely amoral woman who takes delight in sleeping around and eventually destroying men....or at least casting them aside and letting them destroy themselves. She goes from one conquest to another and there is absolutely no depth or story--just wigs, nice fashions and, occasionally, a boobie. All this is, supposedly, told to a priest to whom she is confessing--like the plot from a bad porno film!!! The dialog, story and acting are all crap and the film doesn't offer enough salacious content to justify wasting your time---even if you see it out of curiosity. Dull, stupid and a waste of a beautiful and very talented woman. I give this film a 1 because I cannot see how anyone could make sex or Bardot dull--but they did! Talk about a waste of talent!! By the way, one of the reviewers was particularly harsh towards director Vadim for this and many other travesties. Based on his films that I have seen (such as this, the 'remake' of "And God Created Woman", "Barbarella" and others), this attack seems entirely justified.

Much less exploitative than you would expect, DON JUAN is a generally sympathetic account of how a female Don Juan, a kind of author-figure, wreaks havoc on weak-willed masculinity, before burning in a man-made hell herself. The misogyny of this outcome is tempered if we see the film less about Don Juan (the sex/death routine is not altogether digested), than BB retiring from a generally unyielding film-career, and the private, male-driven hell that was its result, giving the film an appealing relish of revenge. Of course, it is, if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, atrociously made, and becomes tiresome after about five minutes.