And God Created Woman

In the first half, Vadim does the difficult immediately. He can direct impractical actors, non-actors, and children. He can also direct women. Whether this is the foundation of his art or the supreme expression of it is a little hard to tell, because his technique is so well-engineered it always has several things going on at once, effortlessly.

It takes a bit longer to do the impossible, so he leaves it for the second half, when it serves its dramatic purpose. And then, in the last frames, he throws in a little joke to make light of his accomplishment.

The critical and public reception of this leaves me lank with dizziness. Critics saw no relation to Vadim's original, despite the fact that nothing is so clear as the formulation De Mornay-Spano-Langella/Bardot-Trintignant-Jurgens. The box office receipts were laughable.

With an actor like Frank Langella of Broadway, Vadim is able to provide a rare setting for the display of his art. Vincent Spano, who was a game stooge in Creator, is actually quite a good actor. Rebecca De Mornay is set free to handle all the complex problems of a difficult or even impossible role as if acting was really a worthwhile occupation that requires a great deal of skill and ingenuity to be successful at, and which provides a great deal of enjoyment to the performer and the spectator.

Saint-Tropez is now Santa Fe. De Mornay is an ambitious slut who escapes from prison and meets a gubernatorial candidate (Langella) who helps her slip back inside unnoticed, and later helps with her parole, which she wins by paying a carpenter (Spano) to marry her in name only. She wants to be a rock-and-roll songwriter, leading a band.

Vadim doesn't miss a thing, but he has no axe to grind. His characters are recognizably human, and so is what happens to them. This constitutes drama, in his view. His sangfroid and his wit sustain him through the barrenness he finds as his proper ground for preparation and planting, whereas the critics were lost after fifteen minutes.

New Mexico receives the startled vision of its ancient and modern dwelling-places (not the landscape) like a burden relieved. His Santa Fe is not a tourist trap nor a cultural Mecca but a small town in a unique place where people live their lives, and one of them was Randall Davey, the painter whose house is now a museum where a crucial scene was filmed.

A rock promoter says of De Mornay, "Can't sing, but she's got a great ass." Another one agrees. "I feel the same way about that. Great ass! Can't fucking sing!" Vadim is nothing if not economical.

Like a classical drama, this attains the farmost of various eccentric orbits, then settles down to the music of the spheres.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002