| A Very Private Affair | |
| Native Name: | |
| Director: | Louis Malle |
| Starring: | Brigitte Bardot Marcello Mastroianni Nicolas Bataille Eléonore Hirt |
| Producer: | Christine Gouze-Renal |
| Music: | Fiorenzo Carpi |
| Cinematography: | Henri Dacae |
| Distributor: | Pathe Films Metro Goldwyn Mayer |
| Runtime: | 103 minutes |
| Language: | French English |
| Country: | France |
| Gross: | 1,879,668 admissions (France)[1] |
A Very Private Affair (French: '''Vie privée'''|lit=Private Life) is a 1962 French romantic drama film directed by Louis Malle and starring Brigitte Bardot.[2]
Eighteen-year-old Jill enjoys a privileged upper-class existence with her widowed mother in a country house outside Geneva and plays at becoming a dancer. Falling secretly in love with her best friend's husband Fabio, a handsome and gifted Italian, she heads off to Paris, becoming a model and then getting into films. After enjoying many disposable lovers and becoming a world-famous star, she has a breakdown and goes back to her mother.
With the house besieged by paparazzi, she is rescued by Fabio, whose wife has left him. Hidden in his apartment she becomes his secret lover, but he has to go to Spoleto where he is mounting an open-air version of Heinrich von Kleist's play Das Käthchen von Heilbronn. Unable to stay alone in hiding, she joins him there but in no time is recognised and pursued by the media. Once again, she has to hide on her own in his apartment while he gets the play ready for performance. On the opening night she creeps out onto the roof to watch but is spotted by a paparazzo and, startled by the flash of his camera, slips off. As she falls to her death, her face achieves a serenity it has never shown before.
According to a 1963 report by CNC France, Bardot's two films, The Truth and A Very Private Affair, generated a combined net profit of $640,000 for their distributors in the United States.[3]