Please, Not Now! Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Please, Not Now! Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov January 22, 2024

Roger Vadim's "Please, Not Now!" a.k.a. "La bride sur le cou" (1961) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the release include exclusive new audio commentary by critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and vinrtage U.S. trailer. In French, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

This is a watch. Do you know how it works? It helps you be on time.

Roger Vadim’s Please, Not Now! is remembered for a single reason, which emerges toward the end of it in a nightclub somewhere in the French Alps. The reason is Vadim’s obsession at the time, Brigitte Bardot, who performs a seductive dance with nothing else but some sort of tiny towel around her waist. It is a very short dance, which is not really happening because it is part of a wet dream. There is not a lot to see because the wet dream is blurry too, but the consensus among male viewers at the time was that Bardot still showed enough to keep France and some parts of Europe where the film was screened hot during the next couple of winters.

The rest of the film is supposed to produce a lot of laughs but only occasionally does. Bardot plays quite well the not-so-bright blonde Sophie and models for her boyfriend photographer, Phillippe (Jacques Riberolles), who is something of an authority in a tiny studio in Paris. Sophie has big plans for her and Phillippe but discovers that he has fallen madly in love with the very wealthy American beauty Barbara (Josephine James), who intends to take him back to her hometown of Chicago. While fuming, Sophie then vows to quickly reclaim Phillippe -- either by winning his heart back or killing him in the most horrendous way imaginable.

A casual encounter expands Sophie’s plan. In a busy bistro, she meets the handsome surgeons and playboys Alain (Michel Subor) and Claude (Claude Brasseur), who repeatedly fail to convince her to spend the night with them. Sophie then convinces Alain to travel with her to a posh resort in the French Alps, which Phillippe and Barbara have chosen for a romantic vacation, and become a key piece in her plan to reclaim her ex-boyfriend. But even before they reach their destination, Alain, who is supposed to only pretend to be Sophie’s new boyfriend, begins to fall madly in love with her and creates all sorts of different problems. While trying to force him to behave properly, Sophie also begins to realize that Alain could be a petty good boyfriend, too.

Vadim breaks the film into three uneven parts, each with plenty of silly material that treats Bardot as a big star and forces everyone around her to see her as such. Considering what she is expected to do with her blonde, which is have her say and do a lot of very silly things, Bardot does become the star of the film, but the laughs that are supposed to emerge along the way are very inconsistent.

However, it is not Bardot’s fault, it is Vadim’s fault, who also scripted the film with the help of several writers. Indeed, there is plenty of material where Vadim’s camera emphasizes Bardot’s physical beauty, which is entirely understandable, but at the expense of the laughs. When it happens, it is easy to tell that Bardot is trying to make this material look good too, and while she is successful, the transitions between the comedy material and the modeling material are not always great.

The final part has the best material. Once in the French Alps, Bardot and Subor develop lovely chemistry, and their efforts to force Riberolles to reconsider his commitment to his American girlfriend become quite entertaining. This is where Bardot is given the freedom to behave as a seductress too, so there is good suggestive material as well.

A young Mireille Darc has a small part too, which is rather disappointing because Vadim could have used her as an important player in Bardot’s plan.

Vadim worked with cinematographer Robert Lefebvre, who later in his career worked almost exclusively with Max Pecas and lensed many of the popular French erotic films of the 1960s and 1970s. Levebvre’s final collaboration was with Radley Metzger on the cult erotic thriller The Image.

Please, Not Now! Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Please, Not Now! arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Please, Not Now! has been fully restored and looks wonderful on Blu-ray. Excluding a couple of tiny blemishes that could have been removed with digital tools, I do not see any room for meaningful improvements. Delineation, clarity, and depth, for instance, range from very good to excellent. The grayscale is terrific, too. Blacks are lush and stable, while the existing ranges of grays and whites are wonderfully balanced. Shadow definition is managed very, very well, too. Density levels are great. There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. Image stability is terrific. All in all, this release offers a lovely organic presentation of Please, Not Now! and will probably remain its definitive home video release in America. My score is 4.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Please, Not Now! Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: French DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

The dialog is very clear, clean, and stable. Despite plenty of music throughout the film, however, dynamic intensity is quite modest. This is to be expected in a film from the early 1960s, so it is something that can be improved. The English translation is excellent. While viewing the film, I did not encounter any audio dropouts or similar encoding anomalies to report in our review.

Please, Not Now! Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - presented here is a vintage U.S. trailer for Please, Not Now!. In English, not subtitled. (2 min).

• Commentary - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.

Please, Not Now! Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Please, Not Now! is a famous film in Brigitte Bardot's body of work because of a notorious sequence she shot with Roger Vadim. As a romantic comedy, it is not particularly effective, but this is a moot point because the overwhelming majority of the films Bardot made between the 1950s and 1970s in which she was the main attraction prioritized her physical beauty. This recent release from Kino Lorber introduces a wonderful restoration of Please, Not Now! and should remain its definitive home video release in America. RECOMMENDED.