![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/g/girlonamotorcycle.jpg)
Girl on a Motorcycle
Looking for a sexy, go-go-inspired motorcycle flick about a chick on loose in a tight leather suit? Then avoid the 1968 Girl on a Motorcycle, a hopelessly indulgent, nowhere-take on freedom and womanhood by misguided director Jack Cardiff. Marianne Faithful stars as a young woman bored with bouncing between her schoolteacher husband and her egocentric lover (a very stoned-looking Alain Delon), but never feels more alive than when she zips into her tight leather bike gear and straps her legs around her powerful hog. This could've been great exploitation material, but Girl on a Motorcycle instead offers a dull series of brain-dead, pseudo-strengthening inner monologues (for instance, as Faithful zooms past a Swiss cemetery, she ruminates on all those men who died for nothing in Europe's wars, overlooking the small detail that without those deaths her coveted freedom wouldn't exist). Billed by Anchor Bay as the "uncensored European version," it's hard to tell what would have been censored in the first place. There's a little nudity, but any sex in the film is obscured by pointless, acid-induced processing effects. Director Cardiff — more accomplished as a cinematographer for films like Rambo: First Blood, Part II — seems as lost as his heroine, and the only good thing you can say about the screenwriting is at least they had the sense to kill this wishy-washy bitch before it's all over — she deserves it. Presented in 1.66:1 widescreen and 1.0 mono with commentary by Cardiff and a still gallery. The most promising thing about this disc is its misleadingly groovy menu design, but that only lasts about three seconds.
—Gregory P. Dorr
