How to tell, in six 52-minute episodes, the love stories of Brigitte Bardot, who, for ten years, made the happiness of a press that was not yet called people?
Danièle and Christopher Thompson made the bet to achieve this, by choosing to play the ellipsis card.
What happened between the moment of love at first sight and that of the break with her lovers?
You won't see it on screen, but, in reality, the fires of love didn't go out as suddenly as the show suggests.
Divorce
Thus, the divorce between Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot is not the direct consequence of the very long kiss exchanged with Jean-Louis Trintignant, in front of the cameras, during the filming of And God…
created woman
.
The problems started the day after their marriage.
The future director, then a journalist for
Paris Match
magazine , spends his nights playing poker with his friends, to the despair of his young wife, who hates sleeping alone.
In order to compensate for this lack, he offers her his first dog, a 2-month-old black cocker spaniel, baptized Clown.
Little by little, their passion was thus transformed into essentially fraternal relations.
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The months during which she lived with Jean-Louis Trintignant were not limited to a fusion of bodies, evoked in a particularly suggestive scene in the series.
Brigitte, whom some consider, wrongly, as an idiot, has forged, thanks to him, a musical and literary culture.
It is to him that she owes the discovery of Brassens, Albinoni, Charles Cros and many other poets.
Madrague secret garden
A little later, Sacha Distel, who succeeded Gilbert Bécaud in the heart of Brigitte Bardot, introduced her to the world of jazz, and its biggest names, from Miles Davis to Sarah Vaughan via Stéphane Grappelli or Claude Luter. .
He has been present in her life for much longer than the series shows.
It was on the advice of his “lover” that, during the summer of 1958, Distel decided to try his luck in song with the objective of becoming the “French Sinatra”.
The first sketches of his repertoire were born near La Madrague, which BB does not owe the discovery to a real estate agent in Saint-Tropez.
The authors have chosen this option for reasons of simplification, but the truth is otherwise.
On May 15, 1958, in Paris, at the end of a day of filming
La
Femme et le
Pantin
, Brigitte receives a call from her mother, Anne-Marie Mucel (played in the series by Géraldine Pailhas, the partner of director Christopher Thompson).
This one is in Saint-Tropez, and has just visited a house "feet in the water" which corresponds exactly to the one her daughter has been looking for, in vain, for several months.
There are many candidates to acquire this property on the Canebiers road and an almost immediate response must be given to the agency, which, of course, is ready to give priority to such a famous client.
Night Train
On Saturday evening, Brigitte jumped on a night train for Saint-Raphaël.
The next morning, she falls in love with a tropical landscape which she will make her secret garden.
Love at first sight is such that, in the moment, she decides to break the bank, and even to go into debt by buying this house for 24 million old francs.
She signs the deed of purchase at the beginning of the afternoon with a notary who, for her, has exceptionally opened his office on a Sunday.
In 1966, Gunter Sachs flew over this property in a helicopter, the scene of many parties, to pour a shower of rose petals there as a declaration of love.
The pink and white checkered gingham dress is also part of BB's legend. The script does not specify that she wore it, for the first time, on June 18, 1959, the day of her marriage to Jacques Charrier, in Louveciennes, the only town where, with a few discreet donations, the mayor had agreed not to publish banns.
She had chosen this outfit for its softness and simplicity, unaware that it was going to launch a fashion which, more than sixty years later, remains more topical than ever.
