With her fiery blond hair, her falsely ingenuous face, her tousled hair, her pout, and her fiery gaze, Julia de Nunez is Brigitte Bardot. Notice to all ex-fans of the sixties, BB, the actress of Le Mépris and very first French starlet, is the subject of a mini-series directed by Danièle and Christopher Thompson for France Télévision, on your screens since May 8.
And Bardot created the flame
The Americans had Elizabeth Taylor, and France had Brigitte Bardot. In other words, the international star or, rather the total icon. A nonchalant personality with a free spirit who, by her antics, has aroused both admiration and indignation.
In love with love, Brigitte Bardot indulged in polyamory long before it became popular with the current generation Z. Once again ahead of her time, she questioned motherhood during the stammering “Trentes Glorieuses” with a still-corseted mind. She does not hesitate to resort to abortion, a highly symbolic gesture for the period and even more so today when this right is being challenged in some twenty American states.
How did Brigitte become the BB myth, a phantasmagorical apparition of New Wave cinema, and a matrix figure of female emancipation?
This is what the new six-part Bardot series seeks to decipher, with Danièle and Christopher Thompson – mother and son – behind the camera.
This French-Italian co-production looks back at 1949-1960, a prolific period of cinematographic Bardot marking the star’s meteoric rise.
We follow chronologically a young girl of 15 dreaming of becoming a dancer, suffocating in a bourgeois family in the 16th arrondissement of Paris until her 26th birthday and her suicide attempt in her house in La Madrague in Saint-Tropez.
A Bardot who ceases to be Brigitte with the very transgressive – for the time – And God … created woman (1956). The film gives the actress access to the status of a sex symbol and prefigures the sexual revolution of 1968. This work also puts in the spotlight a small fishing port in the Var, until then popular with impressionists: Saint-Tropez.
The series’ shooting took place on the beach of the Ponche, one of the mythical places of the film by Roger Vadim, who was one of the first to favor outdoor shots.
A sunny snapshot of the Parisian woman, she dares to wear a sailor suit and Repetto ballerinas. She is as comfortable with Jacques Esterel’s gingham dresses as with mini-shorts and thigh-high boots.
So many inspiring elements that justify its adaptation into a series.
A Brigitte more real than life
“It’s the story of a young girl who, like the others, is looking for love and success but whose dreams are shattered by the hysteria she unleashes.” This is how the co-director of this series on BB’s youth describes the project.
Click here to read the full article on Luxus Plus Magazine.
Featured photo : © France Télévision/Federation Studios
