Two Weeks in September

1967 British-French film by Serge Bourguignon

7 June 1967 (1967-06-07) (France)
26 October 1967 (1967-10-26) (UK)

Running time

95 minutesCountriesFrance
United KingdomLanguagesFrench
EnglishBudget7 million francs^[1]Box office691,609 admissions (France)^[1]

Two Weeks in September (French title: À coeur joie; also known as Joy-hearted) is a 1967 British-French drama film directed by Serge Bourguignon and starring Brigitte Bardot, Laurent Terzieff, Jean Rochefort and James Robertson Justice.^[2]

Plot

Model Cecile spends two weeks away from her older lover Philippe and is tempted by a younger man.

Cast

Brigitte Bardot as Cécile
Laurent Terzieff as Vincent
Jean Rochefort as Philippe
James Robertson Justice as McClintock
Michael Sarne as Dickinson
Georgina Ward as Patricia
Carole Lebel as Monique
Annie Nicolas as Chantal
Murray Head as Dickinson's assistant

Production

The film was the sixth in a series of movies financed jointly by the Rank Organization and the NFFC. British companies provided 30% of the budget; French companies provided 70%.^[3] It was shot at the Billancourt Studios in Paris and on location around London. Scenes for the film were also shot on the beach at Gullane in East Lothian in September 1966. The principal cast stayed at the Open Arms in Dirleton.[1] Archived 25 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine

Soundtrack

The soundtrack features two songs in English, "Do You Want to Marry Me?" and "I Must Tell You Why", with music by Michel Magne and vocals sung by David Gilmour, working as a session musician with his band Jokers Wild, before he joined Pink Floyd.^[4]

Reception

Critical

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Supremely ludicrous amalgam of all the clichés of women's magazine fiction, flashily photographed, and directed by Serge Bourguignon at a snail's pace and in a style that fully matches the inanities of the plot. The dialogue (rendered in Franglais) produces some of the best unconsciously funny lines for a long time, none better perhaps than kilted Scottish laird James Robertson Justices embarrassed explanation to the young lovers in his ruined castle that his tape-recorder is only supposed to be set off by a certain frequency emitted by birds – "And it would appear, madam, that you made exactly the same noise." There's a fashion photographer who tells his models to "hate me a little", a photographic session amid the pink deckchairs of a London park, and a whole succession of close-ups of Bardot in various stages of undress, including one of her in a bubble bath opining that "happiness is just drops of water". It might almost be a parody. But a film which signals a passionate love scene on a bed of straw in a ruined castle by a cut to waves pounding on a beach is obviously in deadly earnest."^[5]

"Two hours wasted" said the Los Angeles Times.^[6]

The film received very poor reviews overall.^[7]

Box office

The film was a box office disappointment.^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Box office information on film at Box Office Story
^ "Two Weeks in September". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 19 August 2024.
^ Petrie p 9
^ "David Gilmour: Wider Horizons". 14 November 2015. BBC. Retrieved 14 November 2015. {{cite episode}}: Missing or empty |series= (help)
^ "Two Weeks in September". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 34 (396): 172. 1 January 1967 – via ProQuest.
^ 'September' for Brigitte Bardot, Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times 10 Nov 1967: d24.
^ Petrie p 14

Notes

Petrie, Duncan James (2016). "Resisting Hollywood Dominance in Sixties British Cinema : The NFFC/Rank Joint Financing Initiative" (PDF). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.