Bye bye, Barbara (1969)
Directed by Michel Deville

Film Review

Every release of a Michel Deville film invites the same question: which magic trick has this fanciful and unpredictable director prepared for us this time? Of course we have already loved Adorable menteuse (1962), À cause à cause d'une femme (1963) and Lucky Jo (1964), but after Benjamin ou les memoires d'un puceau (1967) the critics and public are expecting nothing less than a miracle.  On the 26/3/69, Bye bye, Barbara, a mixture of crime-thriller and psychological drama, was foisted by Deville on a divided Parisian audience. The title refers to the song blasting from a juke box at the beginning of the film.  Its is performed by Nina Companeez, Deville's partner at the time and faithful screenwriter.

In every one of their film collaborations, the familiar delicacy of the Deville-Companeez partnership always evokes passion in at least one of its manifest guises.  Deville's idea of passion may be sunny, playful, feverish or simply romantic, but in this shady, sophisticated and disturbing piece of work, passion takes on a dark and perverse hue.  Bye bye, Barbara starts as a comedy, develops into an opera and ends as a cynical fairytale.

As he showed throughout his career, Michel Deville is a virtuoso of the camera and his elegant direction, which is full of contrasts and subtle undertones, is a fusion of coolness and mystery with a casual lightness.  Claude Lecomte's colour photography is beautifully expressive and in total harmony with the narrative composition.  A stunning region in the south west of France and then Paris provide exquisite backdrops for the unfolding drama, enhanced by the lush musical score written by the singer-composer Jean-Jacques Debout, an artist who wrote songs for Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan, to name just a few.

As ever, Deville selects his cast with meticulous precision and each of his actors turns in an understated performance that brims with feeling and meaning.  Italian Lolita and cover girl Ewa Swann plays the melancholic and frightened Paula, the central character in the tangled intrigue.  Philippe Avron, a fine actor of stage and screen previously seen in René Clair's final film Les Fêtes galantes (1965), is suitably cast as the colourful journalist Jerôme Thomas.  In what is the only leading role of his career, Avron plays a not-so charismatic seducer that is slightly evocative of Jean-Paul Belmondo. 

In addition to these impeccable leads, the cast contains several familiar names, most notably Bruno Cremer, a perfect choice for the role of the diabolical god of show biz, Hugo Michelli.  En route from her New Wave unveiling to international stardom, Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart excels in the part of Eve, Michelli's dominant and possessive mistress.  First seen in Alain Jessua's Jeu de massacre (1967), Michel Duchaussoy plays the part of Thomas's obliging friend Dimitri - he would later become one of Claude Chabrol's favourite actors, starting with Que la bête meure (1969).  The supporting cast includes Anny Duperey at the start of an honourable career and Yves Brainville.

Bye bye, Barbara may be a modest affair compared with Michel Deville's other great achievements, but it is nonetheless well worth seeing, if only to complete your appreciation of one of the more distinctive and original French filmmakers to emerge and flourish during the French New Wave era.

Film Synopsis

Jérôme Tomas is a sportswriter who is covering an important rugby match in Biarritz when, one evening, he enters a bar and encounters a strange young woman dressed in white.  With the sound of the record 'Bye Bye Barbara' ringing in his ears Jérôme realises at once that he is in love with this mysterious woman, who introduces herself as Paula.  She is in a confused state, as if something serious is preying on her mind, and Jérôme agrees to take her back to his home in Paris.  It is only later that the sportswriter discovers that Paula is the stepdaughter of the wealthy impresario Hugo Michelli.  Jérôme becomes concerned when the unfathomable woman suddenly goes missing, and then he reads in a newspaper that she was killed in a road accident.  Convinced that something is seriously amiss, he begins his own investigation in an attempt to unravel the mystery that was Paula...