GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE / SLOGAN: Naked under leather, naked little homewrecker.

GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE
Starring Marianne Faithfull, Alain Delon, Roger Mutton
Directed by Jack Cardiff
Redemption USA

SLOGAN
Starring Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Andrea Parisy
Directed by Pierre Grimblat
Cult Epics

Reviews by Louis Fowler

60s chanteuse (and 70s junkie) Marianne Faithfull goes full-on sleazy rider in this motorcycle mama flick about a woman in search of...uh...um, yeah, I don't really know. Maybe herself. That's what most rebellious women on the prowl did in movies like this back then, right? Can the cast of ZABRISKIE POINT back me up here?

So, for an hour and a half, Faithfull speeds along the European countryside, eschewing all motor-vehicle safety laws by continually closing her eyes and grimacing to the wind like a drooling moron, reciting vapid internal monologues about the need for societal rebellion and the want for her lover to be inside her as the camera occasionally oversaturates colors. Because the 60s were, like, totally trippy, man.

Yeah, I'm being a bit facetious, but, as irritating as it all could (and can) be, GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE it still a very intoxicating movie to take in, so why fight it?

Faithfull became a bit of sex symbol for wearing only a (wool-lined) leather bodysuit throughout this thing—I can only imagine how stinky that thing must have gotten by the time filming wrapped, not to mention the numerous chaffing heat-ashes she must have endured—been there, done that, sister. That being said, it's a cinematically attractive body odor that wafts off the screen, arousing so much untapped wanton curiosity that has been dormant since, hell, at least college. While we all may melodramatically pretend to vomit when the idea is even brought up, surely all of us do have a secret desire to bed an unwashed homely pseudo-hippie free-spirit with no consequences or qualms, right? GIRL ON A MOTORCYLE lets you live out that perpetual daydream from the comfort of your well-Febrezed Lazy-Boy. No more Rainbow Family Reunions for your dangerous sexual double-life, pal!

Plus, untapped lusts aside, can you really dislike any movie that has a jaunty fondue-eating sequence?

The cast is B-level 60s manufactured cool. Marianne Faithfull—who contributes no songs, seriously—is better in theory than in practice. French Oliver Reed-a-like Alain Delon really tries to amp up the proceeding with a bit of an edgy personality, but, no go. It's Faithfull's show.

Serge Gainsbourg, however...he'd never let himself be upstaged by a starlet. Unless, of course, it was all part his marketing strategy. Which it usually was.

Very few people have ever really just pissed cool right off the screen the way Gainsbourg did. Here was this goblin-like Lothario that managed to seduce and Svengali starlets left and right with all the panache of a cult leader. He punished them, he rationed them, he took them for granted and damned if they didn't have a continual flow of cream in their jeans for him. So, of course, he's a personal hero of mine.

SLOGAN is little-seen yet best-known for being the cinematic mirror to Gainsbourg and nymph co-star Jane Birkin's real-life romance, and, really, that's honestly too bad. SLOGAN is a brilliantly cool, undeniably nihilistic, fantastically aloof tribute to the power and glory of completely self-defeating behaviors. The kind of behaviors that tend to make life interesting, mostly if you're a Frenchman with an inferiority complex.

Gainsbourg is a successful ad-man with a pregnant wife who is totally cool with him having affairs. Progressive! While she's on bed-rest, he's on head-rest, tearing up the countryside with his 18-year-old conquest whom, at parties, he blatantly refers to as his “little house-wrecker” in an effort to exude power over her through degradation. Thankfully, she doesn't mind as she's massively bi-polar (before this was even a diagnosis, obviously—back then it was simply called “quirky”) and fabulously fickle.

Unlike Faithfull, who's GIRL character is irritating because of her constant need to express opinions and thoughts, Birkin is refreshingly sexy because she plays a character (or does she?) that has none of her own. She's a sex-pot puppet and Gainsbourg has definitely got his hand way up her ass. That's sexist to say, sure, but it's nothing Gainsbourg didn't sing about or act on or believe in himself. He was an emotional enigma, but he was no self-serving hypocrite.

GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE, for all it's faults, and SLOGAN, for all it's triumphs, make for a classy, stylized Euro-counterculture double-feature, the kind where you'll want to chain-smoke fondue-dipped Gitanes to capture a true swingin' 60s holy experience.