Love On A Pillow - 50th Anniversary Edition

This very French affair is timeless in its existentialist approach to life and love – what better reason than to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Roger Vadim’s classic Love On A Pillow.

Genevieve Le Thiel (Brigitte Bardot) is a sweet, well brought up girl from upper class background. Leaving her Parisian home to settle an inheritance, she travels to Dijon where she finds a young man upon walking into the wrong hotel room. Obviously he attempted to commit suicide. Raising the alarm, she saves him just in time. Later on, the young man, Renaud (Robert Hossein), takes her for dinner as a ‘thank you’. She ends up falling in love with him, he ends up moving in with her – all the while insisting on individual freedom and declaring emotions such as jealousy to be nothing else than hurt pride and personal vanity. Not only does Genevieve’s mother deeply approve of her daughter’s relationship with her new lover, even his own friends warn her that his self-destructive ways will ruin him. The more Renaud keeps repeating that love is a bottomless pit, the more Genevieve clings to him. One part of Renaud is about to fall in love with her, while the other part can’t accept it and he therefore lashes out at her – it’s a classic Jekyll & Hyde scenario.

Director Roger Vadim, Bardot's ex-husband, has created an incredible slice of cinema. Le Repos Du Guerrier (the original French title) mirrors the whole palette of human emotions and we all can recognise parts of ourselves in the movie’s characters. Robert Hossein excels as a man who loves to loathe himself while Bardot seems too sexy by far to convince us that she is nothing more than just a sweet girl who wants to get married and live happily ever after. Then again, it was the early 60’s…

The DVD has no bonus material and dialogue is in French with English subtitles, though it really pays off to pay attention to the sharp and poignant dialogue!