Love On A Pillow Review

13th Mar 2012

As per usual, before writing my review I logged onto IMDB for a reminder of the names and faces behind it. At the top of the page is the synopsis, which I scanned briefly: “A young girl rescues a man from a suicide attempt.” Yep, fine. “He turns out to be a sociopath, who begins to take over her life, abusing her both verbally and emotionally.” Um…. okaaaaay? A subsequent google search confirms the film is about “a destructive, masochistic and corrupt relationship” between Genevieve (Bardot), a middle-class Parisian girl and Renaud (Robert Hossein), a suicidal alcoholic on the edge of society. I’m starting to wonder if there aren’t two very different sets of subtitles floating around…

The film I watched was anything but this ‘Beauty and the Beast’ update which others so certainly describe. It’s more like an anti-love story in the same league as 500 Days (Of Summer), but set in early ‘60s bohemian Paris. Bridget Bardot, as beautiful as ever, is Genevieve, an upcoming young woman with money in her pocket and a head on her shoulders. She is very clearly of another generation from her mother, with whom she is talking in the opening scene: Genevieve is underwhelmed by everything, from the death of her father, to his infidelity and even the prospect of her own marriage to her respectable beau, Pierre. She’s off to Dijon to claim her inheritance from a recently deceased aunt, “to open a business to keep me busy… doing something I enjoy” to distract her from the prospect of married life.

Fate is a card played very early in this film; upon her arrival in parochial Dijon, the camera lingers for just a few moments on the two hotels she could choose to stay in, and then takes a good two minutes of screen time recording a conversation between the hotelier of her choice as he gives Genevieve her room key (number 10). So it’s not really by chance at all that she stumbles into Room 6, and upon the comatose body of Renaud following his recent suicide attempt. Her attorney’s later admission that “finding a poisoned man here in a quiet town is somewhat unexpected” only confirms that these two people were as meant for each other as wine and cheese.

Brought back to the land of the living after a short stay in hospital, Renaud takes Genevieve to dinner by way of thanking her, his “angel”, for saving his live. He woos her elegantly, admitting “I’m glad you’re so beautiful. You could’ve been a plumber, that would’ve been a real blow.” His hold over her is already beginning to show – Genevieve, punctual to a T, misses her train back to Paris. Her only option then is to spend the night with Renaud. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Under the wing of Renaud, Genevieve quickly transforms into a bohemian wastrel, ignoring phone calls from her doting mother, laying in bed till midday and experiencing her first orgasm. Poor Pierre didn’t stand a chance really, so it’s no surprise when she casually breaks up with him. “I’m still your friend” he tells her as she gets out of his car for the last time before screaming “fucking bitch!” and slamming the steering wheel. The breakup with Pierre is a pivotal point in the film, summed up by Genevieve in a single phrase: “I’ve just said goodbye to my past. And to my future.” After that nothing else seems to matter, and Genevieve and Renaud descend further into the Parisian underbelly circa 1962. There are trumpets, saxophones and plenty of alcohol. It’s all very wholesome, if you ask me.

As the pair fall deeper and deeper in love, they hate each other more and more for accessing areas of their consciousness which had been strictly private. They drive each other away at every turn, with Renaud insisting that “I am neither a nurse nor a boy scout. You have nothing to gain from me”, trading ten thousand francs for a scrap of poem and buying cheap hookers, and Genevieve clinging desperately on to her ideas of convention and respectability despite falling head first into the “abyss” of love with a man who can offer her nothing but instability. A trip to Italy is the straw which breaks the donkey’s back and drives the ultimate stake between the two misfits… or does it?

“She gave me her love, like a virus” laments Renaud, but was it Ebola or a common cold? Well, that’s for you to find out in the unexpected and jarring finale of Love on a Pillow. And if all that isn’t enough to draw you into buying this anti-love film, did I mention Bridget Bardot’s side-boob?