Co-written and directed by Danièle and Christopher Thompson, “Bardot”, the six-episode series, broadcast on France 2 from Monday, highlights the revelation of the cinema icon in the 1950s.
Brigitte Bardot would lose interest in the series that Danièle and Christopher Thompson devote to her. Too bad, because it gives a beautiful image of the actress, an independent woman before her time and caught up in the media. The authors have found in Julia de Nunez an ideal young actress to embody BB, combining talent and a disturbing resemblance to Bardot, without overdoing it. The series is broadcast on France 2 from Monday May 8 at 9:20 p.m., and is available in full on france.tv.
The authors focused on the period 1949-1960, when Brigitte Bardot rose to prominence with the public, from her modeling and her first major role in 1952 in THE Norman hole (Jean Boyer) with Bourvil, until The truth by Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1960. It is an intimate Brigitte Bardot that the series invites us to discover. The actress and the woman mingle, from the young bourgeois, daughter of an industrialist (Hippolyte Girardot plays her father and Géraldine Pailhas her mother), to the star, forced to live cloistered to flee the paparazzi. The idea of focusing on the beginning of his career is justified and romantic. It exposes the destiny of a young woman whose life becomes a media soap opera, caught between her success and the ransom of glory.
Making a biopic series during Brigitte Bardot’s lifetime is not easy. The initiative is like the final link in a media process dating back more than 70 years. Danièle and Christopher Thompson, both writing and directing, bring a lot of veracity to the story, in its reconstruction. Julia de Nunez, for the first time on screen, is a revelation, like “BB” in the 1950s.
Societal phenomenon
The evocation of the life of Brigitte Bardot brings us into contact with her actor and director partners, who have sometimes become actors in her private life. It is a curiosity to see Henri-Georges Clouzot interpreted by Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Roger Vadim by Victor Belmondo, Jean-Louis Trintignant by Noham Edje. Her story with Jacques Charrier (Oscar Lesage), a young actor whose career she will break, and first husband, is stunning. This young generation of actors assumes to carry on their shoulders a part of the history of French cinema.
The birth of the Bardot star is romantic enough to arouse curiosity, and trigger imaginations. Finally, Bardot has been a social phenomenon since the 1950s, whose charm of reconstitution also operates on screen.
Jean Gabin, with whom Brigitte Bardot toured In case of misfortune (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958), considered at the time that she had “the instinctive nature of the greats, a tone, an absolute strangeness, between brutality and candor”. This vision is found in the series and the interpretation of Julia de Nunez, of all plans. A downside, however, emanates from the great dominance of interior scenes over exteriors, but it was still a very Parisian period in the actress’s life. Danièle and Christopher Thompson do not despair of one day following up.
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“Bardot”, de Daniele Thompson and Christopher Thompson
With: Julia de Nunez, Hippolyte Girardot, Géraldine Pailhas, Yvan Attal, Anne Le Ny, Louis-Do de Lecquesaing, Victor Belmondo, Noham Edjen, Oscar Lesage
Series in six episodes
Broadcast date: Monday, May 8, 2023, 9:10 p.m., and in full on francetv.fr