"Enigmatic" is a good way of describing Roger Vadim's, Le Repos Du Guerrier which charts the complicated love-life of high-class Parisian woman Brigitte Bardot. Vadim was responsible for raising the profile of Bardot's career back in the '50s with the film …And God Created Woman, as well as being married to her for five years between 1952 and 1957. Le Repos Du Guerrier appeared five years after their divorce… many will find it weird that an ex-couple continued to work together in this way, sometimes on quite sexualised films, but the fact is they collaborated on a significant number of movies after their split.Pedantic middle-class Parisian Genevieve Le Theil (Bardot) lives in her late father's elegant apartment, leading a comfortable but empty existence. Her mother (Jacqueline Porel) still grumbles bitterly about her deceased husband's infidelity, but Genevieve seems to care little about her father's reputation as an adulterer. In fact, she seems underwhelmed by just about every aspect of her life, including her relationship with well-to-do businessman Pierre (Jean Marc Bory). Genevieve is summoned to the provincial town of Dijon to receive a sizable inheritance. She says she will use the money to "open up a business… keep me busy, doing something I enjoy". However, during her stay in Dijon she inadvertently comes across a comatose man who has recently attempted to commit suicide. She manages to get help in time to save his life. Soon, Genevieve can't stop thinking about the coincidental chain of events that led her to discover the man before it was too late. She becomes obsessed with the notion that fate united them for a purpose, and decides to visit him in hospital. His name is Renaud Sarti (Robert Hossein), and it isn't long before he works his way into Genevieve's mind with his forthright charm and confident swagger. Before she knows it, she is involved in a whirlwind romance with Renaud, leaving behind her previously well-organised lifestyle in favour of the bohemian hedonism to which he has introduced her. Her mother is appalled, Pierre is heartbroken, and even Renaud's fatherly friend Katov (James Robertson Justice) warns that the relationship is likely to self-destruct. Renaud's extraordinary appetite for indulgence of every kind (drinking, smoking, pulp fiction, jazz, whores) threatens to engulf him… and Genevieve with him.The film is beautifully shot and blessed with engaging performances. Bardot is allowed the rare opportunity here to act rather than being just a pouty European sex symbol… this is a real role, nuanced and challenging, and she proves she has some talent with a performance that is both deep and believable. Hossein is terrific as the self-indulgent Renaud, managing the difficult trick of being alluring and abhorrent at the same time. Where Le Repos Du Guerrier comes undone somewhat is in the writing. It's hard to like any of the main characters… to spend 98 minutes in the company of someone as arrogant, indulgent and nihilistic as Renaud, or as excessively analytical and fanciful as Genevieve, ends up being a rather exasperating experience. Yes, their performances are first-rate, but the characters they play often cry out for a good slap across the face. Le Repos Du Guerrier is a good film but not one that many viewers will want to watch again. It is worth seeing for its striking photography and excellent performances, but the film's conclusion - that ending up in a destructive romance is better than no romance at all - is ultimately rather depressing.

'Le repos du guerrier' is characterized by its mood. A slow, laid-back, not to say inert mood. Getting into it is an absolute condition to appreciate this movie, I think. Otherwise watching will be very boring.However, I detected one scene that may unite appreciators and non-appreciators. Its jazz-tune, somewhere halfway this movie, really is very good.All in all a movie with an unususal thin story, even for Bardot-standards. That may be inspired by the Italian Fellini/Antonioni-movies, whcih were very fashionable in 1962. If 'repos' provides us with any theme, it's about the battle of the sexes. Brigitte comes out victorious: a foregone conclusion, given the nitwit-character of her male counterpart.

May be you will say that this is spoiler. But it is not at all. It is just the truth. Because I can assure you there is not another way to write about this movie picture. If you are in the mood to become a cretinous man (or woman), see this film. If after some minutes you begin to answering yourself why you are watching this film (except for enjoy Bebé charm, not show at this work, by the way), you can see the movie. It has got the extraordinary capacity of every people and everything inside was infinitely silly. The Repos du guerrier showing at TV is an excellent chance to switch off the tv set and read a book (Gonzalo Amigo's Las crónicas trascendidas, for instance),and learn some good Spanish at same time.

This film's interest lies less in its indifferent, sweetly bourgeois bourgeois-baiting, than in its dramatisation of Vadim's mind, his sense of power in having 'created' Bebe; his emasculation as she transcended and abandoned him. This schizophrenia is given the revenge treatment here as Bardot navigates a liberating plot, eventually escaping stifling social respectability and imperiously mastering sadistic lover. This is filmed, however, in a fetishistic way, diminishing her sexual power, while leaving her nakedly vulnerable to the masculine gaze.