But inside, her part as a star was killing her. An early motherhood in the throes of a failing marriage to Vadim only made her realize how out of her depth she was. Still very much a kid herself, she struggled to find the guidance from others that she needed so much in the maelstrom of fame.
“I was adrift and lost. You can’t cling onto a newborn.”
Made with the full cooperation and approval of Bardot, this film brims with respect and love. BB contributes a wonderful voice-over, dropping one terrific line after another as she looks back on it all from her retirement in St. Tropez. We don’t really see her on screen, just a hand writing as she talks and the back of her head or her shoulder, which gives her presence a nicely authorial air. She is constantly poetic when talking about her life and times.
“I wanted to kill myself in front of a sheepfold,” she explains of the first of nine suicide attempts, the bizarre statement carrying the nugget of what saved her, her lifelong devotion to animal welfare.
“(Bardot) is constantly poetic when talking about her life and times”
Written by a team of Berliner, Nicolas Bary, Jessica Menéndez, and Elora Thevenet, Bardot is as gorgeous and clever as France’s favorite sex kitten was in her heyday. Her story is told in largely chronological order, with some famous talking heads, including Naomi Campbell and Stella McCartney, who highlight her liberation of women from the painful formality of the day by popularizing comfortable yet stylish fashion such as Breton tops and ballet flats.
The soundtrack in particular is great, utilizing a musical collaborator of Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg. His track, Ford Mustang, mixed in with Bardot singing her paean to freedom, Harley Davidson, is a delicious leitmotif throughout. The film is also visually inventive, taking old footage of galas and premiers with Bardot in attendance and supplementing these with tightly zoomed, dynamic inserts staged with a modern actress. The effect is electrifying, like being propelled back in time to the throng on the Croisette in the fifties, every flashbulb popping.
The Vatican once described Bardot as “the definition of sin and evil,” but of course, she went on to altruism that should thoroughly shame any detractors. She sums it all up thusly: “Animals saved my life. I survived fighting to protect them.”
Bardot is pretty much a perfect film about a pretty much perfect subject.
Bardot screened at the 2025 Taormina Film Festival.
"…a pretty much perfect film about a pretty much perfect subject."
