The star said all the bad things she thought about a festival that she no longer recognizes. Its director replied by explaining that she had no “competence” to talk about it.
That’s what you call being sent back to the ropes… During a major interview given to BFMTV, Brigitte Bardot couldn’t help but vomit on the Cannes Festival, which she believes has lost its prestige, its dream, and its class… “It’s a nightmare,” she declared bluntly, without pulling punches, as is her habit. “Too many bad films, too many unimportant people. There are no more magnificent actors, no more people who make you dream…”
And she went on to trash French cinema, which, according to her, no longer produces great films but only “shitty little things.” “Current films are so boring,” continues “BB,” 90 years old. “It’s social, it’s ugly, it doesn’t make you dream…” A disappointment that is not new, since she admits to having stopped cinema in the 1970s for this reason as well. “I’ve always wanted to quit before they quit me. Cinema, I didn’t feel it was right anymore. I felt that there were no more beautiful stories, pretty scripts, good dialogues, good directors… That’s why I decided to stop.”
A blunt outburst not appreciated by Thierry Frémaux, the general delegate of the Cannes Festival, who responded to “BB” as soon as the festivities opened on the Croisette. “Obviously, I don’t agree,” he let out in a press conference. “Brigitte Bardot was something important for cinema at a certain time. The rest, I don’t think she has the slightest competence to talk about it, except as a spectator…”
Bikini and Kirk Douglas
And he added: “Cinema continues to be this magnificent art that takes us on beautiful journeys, so maybe we should invite her to come and take some journeys […] She remembers her cinema as something happy. She’s right, but we too are experiencing very happy things today, thanks to today’s creators…”
Bardot has marked the Cannes Festival several times with her imprint. She was noticed at her beginnings, in 1953, as a simple starlet, posing in a bikini on the beach, notably alongside Kirk Douglas… She returned several times before becoming a worldwide star thanks to the sultry film And God… Created Woman, by Roger Vadim. And she caused a real riot when she was invited in 1967, nearly being suffocated on the steps of the Palais des Festivals. She never set foot there again…
On May 19, “BB” will nevertheless be honored on the Croisette: a documentary simply titled Bardot will be screened during the Festival, a project in which she participated, but which she will not go to support. “I haven’t seen it, I don’t care,” she commented to BFMTV. “It’s nice, but well…” The former worldwide star has drawn a line under showbiz and intends to devote the remaining years she has left to animals, the fight of her life…
