"A Very Private Affair": A portrait of Brigitte Bardot, an unusual biographical film

Brigitte Bardot, misunderstood

"To some she was Joan of Arc, to many she was a prostitute." (Louis Malle)

"A Very Private Affair" begins with a ballet lesson scene. The beautiful acrobatic shots, using large mirrors, were done by Henri Decae, one of the leading cinematographers of the French New Wave. Gilles was born into a bourgeois family, went from ballet to modelling, and then became a film star who was adored by the media and attracted not only love but also hatred from the public. Gilles' life traces the real life of Brigitte Bardot in a digest-like fashion.

The scene where Gilles is verbally abused by a woman in an elevator is an episode that Brigitte Bardot actually experienced. It was a terrifying scene in a confined space. Brigitte Bardot looked back on that time in her autobiography.

"You little slut, you little scum, you whore. You take all the men away from us poor women. I'll fuck your face up, I'll gouge your eyes out," she said, gripping a fork and trying to stab me.

“A Very Private Affair” ©1962 GAUMONT - STUDIO 37 – CCM

"The Bardot phenomenon." This film depicts the women who admired Jill and walked around town with the same hairstyle as her, but also the hatred from people who were fueled by gossip. The real Brigitte Bardot was a woman who had little interest in celebrity-like high-brand clothes and accessories, and Coco Chanel criticized Brigitte Bardot's fashion as "ugly." However, unlike Chanel, who became a celebrity item, Brigitte Bardot's style was popular with the masses. It is in these moments that we can sense Brigitte Bardot's innate rebelliousness and threat.

Being a threat in any era is something that will be praised, criticized, and misunderstood at the same time. What was truly new about Brigitte Bardot was that she was loved by audiences for her natural style without being protected by a large system like Hollywood, and at the same time, she threatened the values ​​of the time. Louis Malle described Brigitte Bardot as a pioneer of feminism, even though she was not a political figure. Simone de Beauvoir, a feminist theorist known for " The Second Sex ," praised Brigitte Bardot in the best possible terms in her essay "Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome" (Brigitte Bardot read " The Second Sex ").

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