Le Repos du Guerrier (1962)
Genre: Romance / Drama
Duration: 102 minuten
Alternative titles: Love on a Pillow / Warrior's Rest / Il Riposo del Guerriero
Country:
France / Italy
Directed by: Roger Vadim
Stars: Brigitte Bardot, Robert Hossein and James Robertson Justice
IMDb score:
5,5 (861)
Releasedate: 5 September 1962
This movie is not available on US streaming services.
Le Repos du Guerrier plot
Genevieve is a typical inward-looking woman eager to become a real estate agent and have a good life. Instead, she goes to a small village to receive an inheritance. She accidentally walks into the wrong hotel room. Just in time. The alcoholic Renaud (Robert Hossein) she finds there tries to kill herself by taking sleeping pills. Genevieve saves his life and soon the two have a strange relationship.
Actors and actresses
Geneviève Le Theil
Renaud Sarti
Pierre Leroy
Varange
Madame Le Theil - la mère de Geneviève
Coco
Le brigadier
L'infirmière
L'inspecteur de police
Raphaële
Reviews & comments
eRCee
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- 13455 messages
- 1983 votes
In Le repos du guerrier, Bardot falls for a real sixties character: a nihilistic bohemian, who expects nothing from life and doesn't want to put anything in it. This attitude is in a sense destructive, but at the same time it has something disarming. (Godard also introduces such characters, the writer Julio Cortázar does the same, for example in Rayuela). It is obvious from the outset that the relationship between the two leads to many painful moments, even for those involved, but they cannot avoid it. Fortunately, the characters sometimes explain their motives to each other or to third parties, this seems to be no longer allowed these days, but it does help to follow the protagonists in their actions.
There is little air in the drama from Le repos du guerrier. Vadim does not shy away from the grand gesture. The sets in particular are almost lavish. The crowded apartment from the beginning, then the fancy jazz party and finally the streets of Florence with a closing scene set in a dilapidated church (which I think is a bit overdone, but well, maybe it was intended that way). We do not see Bardot here as a play-girl, but as the grumpy and melancholy woman as she was portrayed in Le mepris. This attitude fits her like a glove, partly thanks to her brooding glance.
All in all, I thought it was pretty strong. With a better soundtrack this could even have been a small gem, but unfortunately there is a kind of generic string music mounted underneath that doesn't add any positive emotion to this typically French, typical 60s character film.
Translated from Dutch · View original
blurp194
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- 5877 messages
- 4414 votes
BB #31
Embouteillage, what a charming word for traffic jam. Until now, I only knew bouchon, which is naturally close to it. Perhaps a bit old-fashioned, just as the length of a traffic jam used to be expressed in millimeters in France.
That is pretty much the most positive thing I have to say about the film, because otherwise it is (ahem, yet again) one of those depressing affairs that French cinema was overflowing with at the time, perhaps as a backlash against the euphoria of the liberation and the sexual revolution. Yes, BB does have a few beautiful scenes, but that does not alter the fact that the film as a whole is more of a torment.
And then especially the music, which as far as I am concerned is truly a horror. I remember all too well how that theme came off the radio ad nauseam in the late 60s—to call that a childhood trauma is no exaggeration—and to find the source of it now in the form of this lazy plagiarism by Michel Magne, who preferred to steal from Bach rather than come up with something himself—no, that does not exactly make me feel grateful or positive about the film.
Narratively, I wasn't exactly impressed either. Mostly the same kind of laziness as in the soundtrack. Very meh.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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