Movie: And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1988)
Remember Oliver Stone's glorious sunrise in Wall Street? The one htat left Michael Douglas completely awestruck? "I've never seen a painting that captures the beauty of the ocean in a moment like this." The opening shots of And God Created Woman want you to feel that way about a prison complex in the desert dawn of New Mexico. In long shot we see a tiny figure descending its walls, as a catchy pop song plays on the soundtrack. Robin's (Rebecca De Mornay)'s attempt to escape seems successful when a limousine picks her up on the open road. Unfortunately, the limo belongs to James Tiernan (Frank Langella), running to be the New Mexico governor on a promise of prison reform. He can't be seen helping criminals escape, not even the flirty ones that lavish him with sexual attention. Driven back to where she came from, Robin now has to break in and get back into her convict clothes. Just when she's stripped naked, guards pass by, and she is forced to hide around the corner, right in the arms of young electrician Billy Moran (Vincent Spano). Who knows what will happen when a naked naughty woman ends up in the embrace of a sexy handyman...
In these opening scenes Vadim gets exactly the right tone for an entertaining tongue-in-cheek sex comedy that appeals to all one's faculties except the intellectual. All he needed to do from here was find increasingly elaborate, lightly humorous set ups to get his lovers in bed, preferably with some farcical misunderstandings sprinkled in between. Alas, he goes into the opposite direction, actively undermining any chemistry between Spano and De Mornay with a stale arranged marriage plot - Robin needs to prove she is a model citizen to remain on parole, and Billy needs someone to take care of the house. It can be fun watching bickering mismatched couples slowly discover they are made for each other, but only if the lovebirds aren't written to be as hateful and cruel as possible at every moment. And if they really need to be, it should at least be in the service of some interesting character development. None of that is the case here, and as a result most of the film is just tedious. It doesn't help that De Mornay and Spano know it, and adjust their liveliness accordingly.
Vadim's approach is to some extent understandable. His 1956 version of And God Created Woman had its cake and ate it, presenting Bardot as a non-conformist rebel while tut-tuting her for showing off her body and her independence. This was a genuine reflection of the confused feelings towards the emerging youth culture of its time; most conflicts in that movie were the result of people struggling to reconcile entirely different worldviews. Here he seeks to create a similar dynamic between an independent woman and a man who wants to put her in her place, but he doesn't put any effort to anchor that in any meaningful way Instead, he goes way over the top depicting Robin and Billy's egotism and indifference towards each other's actions and feelings, ending up with a dumb unpleasant movie. Frank Langella couldn't care less, or make it more obvious how much fun he has playing a politician who enjoys the sleaze he gets away with, and has just enough integrity to not be sleazier than he needs.
