Don Juan or If Don Juan Were a Woman (1976)

Simply Perfect

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I saw this movie not long ago after many years of looking for it , this is the last time ever Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim will work together and this is the last time Bardot will be the star of a major movie her last movie was a small part in Colinot the following year meaning 1974 ,any movie with Bardot is worth watching she is always charming and perfect and so beautiful in this movie she is Don Juan or some type of Don Juan she is great I love the movie from beginning to end not long ago Jane Birkin she is in the movie too, she said to vanity fair the American version that the day she meet Bardot she was breathless as how beautiful she was she said Brigitte was flawless, BARDOT IS UNIQUE HER BEAUTY IS ALWAYS THE MAIN ATRACTION IN A MOVIE but she can be good too and very charming, she have the it, sadly she retired after 1974 and never comeback, today she is 78 years old and doing good for animals, she is the last super star alive

Just after this film and a small part in one other, top screen star Brigitte Bardot retired from films at age 39. Perhaps she was just tired of the life, perhaps she was rich enough and more money held little attraction or perhaps appearing in crap like this film just took the joy out of the life of an actress. I suspect all three are quite likely reasons for this retirement--and you'd think an actress like her could have gotten roles better than this bilge! The film is, in many ways, like a porno film without much sex--with a plot that weak and silly. Bardot plays an impossible to believe and completely amoral woman who takes delight in sleeping around and eventually destroying men....or at least casting them aside and letting them destroy themselves. She goes from one conquest to another and there is absolutely no depth or story--just wigs, nice fashions and, occasionally, a boobie. All this is, supposedly, told to a priest to whom she is confessing--like the plot from a bad porno film!!! The dialog, story and acting are all crap and the film doesn't offer enough salacious content to justify wasting your time---even if you see it out of curiosity. Dull, stupid and a waste of a beautiful and very talented woman. I give this film a 1 because I cannot see how anyone could make sex or Bardot dull--but they did! Talk about a waste of talent!! By the way, one of the reviewers was particularly harsh towards director Vadim for this and many other travesties. Based on his films that I have seen (such as this, the 'remake' of "And God Created Woman", "Barbarella" and others), this attack seems entirely justified.

Brigitte Bardot stars here in her last film along with Jane Birkin, the other singer who recorded the Serge Gainesbourg hit, "Je t'aime". This film is worth seeing, as we see BB's and Vadim's evolution from "And God Created Woman" to this post-sixties over-the-top comedy-drama.We get some great nude scenes with Brigitte and Jane, and BB's character Jeanne is someone fed up with men, so she resorts to seduce and destroy tactics. As in "And God Created Woman" she's pretty much playing herself, but with an exaggerated storyline of driving men to ruin, murder, and suicide. The campy ironic humor is there in such scenarios as seducing a priest as well as setting up a fake menage-a-trois to madden a bete homme. Also a scene with Robert Walker Jr. (Charlie X in Star Trek TOS) where the price she asks for making love is no less than his life, which he takes seriously. The ending is a multiple meaning one as BB saves a man who makes her "pay for her sins" (though he's unappreciative). I think the end hits home for Brigitte in real life saying in effect, "look you male-dominated world, you've made my life hell". And it's the last scene she ever did on film. Worth seeing for it's erotic quality (but what BB film isn't), the submarine home, the early '70s fashions, and the camp.

Much less exploitative than you would expect, DON JUAN is a generally sympathetic account of how a female Don Juan, a kind of author-figure, wreaks havoc on weak-willed masculinity, before burning in a man-made hell herself. The misogyny of this outcome is tempered if we see the film less about Don Juan (the sex/death routine is not altogether digested), than BB retiring from a generally unyielding film-career, and the private, male-driven hell that was its result, giving the film an appealing relish of revenge. Of course, it is, if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, atrociously made, and becomes tiresome after about five minutes.