This sounds irresistible: A rare cinematic outing from an avant-garde French stage director, spoofing the world of pop stardom at the peak counterculture moment of 1968, with lots of parodic songs and crazy psychedelic fashions. Like the same year's French political superhero spoof "Mr. Freedom," however, "Les idoles" is far more appealing in description (and in excerpt) than as an exhausting, broad, shrilly one-note satirical whole.
Pierre Clementi (not normally a huge favorite of mine) really throws himself into the part of a posturing-rebel-style rock star, and is the only principal here whose singing voice (which may well have been dubbed by another performer) is musically passable. Bulle Ogier and the other guy do caricatures of bad singing that grow tiresome fast. Some of the songs are just brief and/or forgettable goofs. But some of them are also quite good, even as they (and the lyrics) send up yeye and other then-recent European pop trends.
But there's almost no story here. The leads are introduced as three solo pop superstars who've "teamed up" as an act, albeit probably just to shore up their suddenly flagging careers. They simply perform and talk about themselves in front of a studio audience, with the interspersed flashbacks showing their cartoonish individual pasts. They're painted as somewhat vacuous, yet occasionally resistant to their handlers' image-molding. That feeds the only real plot point: Eventually Clementi and Ogier are announced as getting married, but it turns out that's a publicity stunt they don't really want to go through with. Finally the film just jerks to a halt, via the little spasm of gratuitous, not-at-all-realistic violence that was practically required for any movie aspiring towards "relevance" and "meaning" at this point in time.
As humorous celluloid takes on pop-music culture from the era go, "Les idoles" is unfortunately closer to "The Phynx" (another movie that sounds like it CAN'T be anything but a riot, until you actually watch it) than "Head," though I suppose it's a mercy that it isn't pretentiously serious in its exposure of the starmaking machinery's soulnessness like "Privilege." Despite the high energy level, occasionally enjoyable music/performances, fun costumes and sets etc., however, it's not cinematically inventive or tonally varied enough to avoid wearing out its welcome pretty fast. This is one of those movies that you start out being delighted by...then not so many minutes later, you can hardly wait for it to end.
Pierre Clementi (not normally a huge favorite of mine) really throws himself into the part of a posturing-rebel-style rock star, and is the only principal here whose singing voice (which may well have been dubbed by another performer) is musically passable. Bulle Ogier and the other guy do caricatures of bad singing that grow tiresome fast. Some of the songs are just brief and/or forgettable goofs. But some of them are also quite good, even as they (and the lyrics) send up yeye and other then-recent European pop trends.
But there's almost no story here. The leads are introduced as three solo pop superstars who've "teamed up" as an act, albeit probably just to shore up their suddenly flagging careers. They simply perform and talk about themselves in front of a studio audience, with the interspersed flashbacks showing their cartoonish individual pasts. They're painted as somewhat vacuous, yet occasionally resistant to their handlers' image-molding. That feeds the only real plot point: Eventually Clementi and Ogier are announced as getting married, but it turns out that's a publicity stunt they don't really want to go through with. Finally the film just jerks to a halt, via the little spasm of gratuitous, not-at-all-realistic violence that was practically required for any movie aspiring towards "relevance" and "meaning" at this point in time.
As humorous celluloid takes on pop-music culture from the era go, "Les idoles" is unfortunately closer to "The Phynx" (another movie that sounds like it CAN'T be anything but a riot, until you actually watch it) than "Head," though I suppose it's a mercy that it isn't pretentiously serious in its exposure of the starmaking machinery's soulnessness like "Privilege." Despite the high energy level, occasionally enjoyable music/performances, fun costumes and sets etc., however, it's not cinematically inventive or tonally varied enough to avoid wearing out its welcome pretty fast. This is one of those movies that you start out being delighted by...then not so many minutes later, you can hardly wait for it to end.