The Bobo Film Review

I picked up this DVD some 30-years ago in Kim's Video store in NYC. It turned out to be a Region 2 disc which at the time I could not play. So, it sat alone, frustrated and forgotten for years till I figured out how to rip films and was able to do that with any Region. At the time I bought it, I was under the impression that this had a very good reputation as one of Peter Seller's better films. It turns out I was wrong about that. It is generally slammed loudly like the door of a spurned lover. For a comedy, looking for laughs is hard to find but I still found the film intriguing and oddly pleasant. It has a European flavor that appealed to me. The setting in Barcelona or make that Barthalona gives it that feel but so does the wisp of a plot that is sexy and silly.

Olimpia is a gold digger par excellence. She has one man giving her a Maserati, another a Porsche and the keys to his apartment which he is no longer allowed to enter. They adore her and want to smother her with kisses but she is always looking for a target higher up on the food chain. She is played by Britt Ekland who at the time was married to Sellers and simply looks scrumptious. Men are movable pieces to her and she and her maid are chess players of love. Into this walks a poor singing matador of small talents but large ambitions. Juan Batista. He announces to a club owner that I will gladly perform in your club. I sing before the bull fight, after and during. The impresario (Adolfo Celi) will only hire him if he is able to seduce Olimpia in three days.

Juan embarks on a brilliant campaign full of deception, charm, alcohol, fast talk to con her into thinking she has hit the big time - not with him - but the man he represents - the Count. Royalty. It really isn't a comedy - more a seduction that plays out as absurd. Sellers plays it straight-ish - just solemnly telling her lie after lie - and his abject apologies for the rudeness of the Count are clever. They intersperse other items into the narrative - a lengthy flamenco dance, a visit to a love nest where Sellers sings The Girl from Barcelona and of course his comeuppance. I expect people will go into a Seller's film expecting Pink Panther like comedy and are quite disappointed that the laughs here are fewer than in a Godard film. Perhaps it started off as a comedy but somewhere along the way it becomes a bittersweet portrait of a man.