In her 2016 essay film, Esther Hoffenberg (As If It Were Yesterday) profiles Bernadette Lafont, a leading light of the French New Wave who starred in groundbreaking films from Jean Eustache, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol.
Through first-person voiceover, film clips, interviews both old and new, and an electric guitar-based score from Dario Rudy, Hoffenberg explores Lafont’s life and career and how the two intertwined. The speakers range from Lafont’s friends, like actors Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, to her granddaughters, Anna, Juliet, and Solène (Lafont died in 2013 at 74).
As a young woman growing up in Belgium in the 1960s and '70s, Hoffenberg marveled at the way the sensual, spirited actress played modern women with minds of their own, undeterred by whatever obstacles male characters might throw in her way. Lafont lived her life the same way. As she says in an archival interview, "Freedom is not given, you have to grasp it."
Lafont grew up in Cévennes with a pharmacist father, like her idol, Leslie Caron. Though inspired by Caron and Brigitte Bardot, she didn’t set out to become an actress. That changed when she met François Truffaut, who cast her alongside her husband, Gérard Blain, in 1957’s Les Mistons. Blain didn’t want her to work, but he allowed it as long as they worked together.
When Lafont’s career took off, the marriage ended. She later stepped away from acting to start a family when she married Hungarian sculptor and filmmaker Diourka Medveczky. She returned to the screen for 1968’s rock-and-roll extravaganza Les Idoles. All the while, she would change her appearance—brunette, blonde, redhead—from year to year. Ogier describes her as “punk before punk.”
Though Lafont had the name recognition to segue from one high-profile project to the next, she was perfectly happy making smaller, more experimental films, in addition to the occasional play. It wasn’t about money, but the quality of the material.
In the documentary, Bulle and Kalfon talk about Lafont’s films while they’re projected on the walls of her ancestral home. Stephen Kijak did much the same in 30 Century Man when he had speakers discuss Scott Walker while playing his records.
Lafont’s daughters, Élisabeth and Pauline Lafont, followed in their mother’s footsteps as actresses, though Pauline would tragically die young. Long since divorced from Medveczky, Lafont poured herself into her work, which she found healing, and continued acting for as long as she could—enjoying a late-in-life hit with the 2012 crime comedy Paulette.
Esther Hoffenberg covers a lot of ground in 66 minutes, but her sixth documentary never feels rushed. Lafont may be a legend in France, but she isn't as well known in the United States, not least since she resisted English-language work—unlike Zig-Zag costar Catherine Deneuve and others. Still, it’s hard to come away from this portrait without admiration for the adventurous films she made and the rich life she lived. To quote Jean-Pierre Kalfon, “She started out as a princess and became a queen.” Recommended.
Which public library collections should include Bernadette Lafont: And God Created the Free Woman?
This documentary is a valuable addition to public library shelves in categories such as International Film, French Cinema, Women & Gender Studies, and Documentary Film Collections. It also complements library resources for media education and film programming focused on European icons or feminist film history. Libraries that license DVDs or digital films from Icarus Films should consider this title for their movie library or home video archive.
What academic subjects or media education courses would benefit from this film?
This documentary supports a range of academic subjects, including 20th-Century French and Francophone Culture, Gender Studies, Cinema Studies, and Documentary Film History. It also serves as a valuable teaching tool for media librarians curating educational documentaries that highlight women’s contributions to the arts, as well as for instructors teaching about the evolution of European film movements through personal biography.