Girl on a Motorcycle

1968 drama


Rating: 9/20


Plot: A leather-clad woman sneaks loudly away on her motorcycle while her husband slumbers because she'd rather be with another lover, a guy whose hair doesn't sit nearly as high. Along the way, she drives recklessly and, when not writhing on her seat with a goofy expression on her face, thinks way too much.


aka Naked Under Leather, this erotic psychedelia has a few moments as exhilarating as I imagine either riding 120 mph on a motorcycle or wearing leather or a combination of the two would be. Most moments unfortunately are just dated--the use of superimposition and acid colors made it seem like I was looking at the backdrop of a Jefferson Airplane concert at times. There were also too many scenes in which characters drove through Sillyland, very obviously in front of a screen and not on an actual moving motorbike. The story should be simple enough, but it's clunked up with flashbacks and fantasy and sometimes flashbacks within flashbacks and flashbacks within fantasies and fantasies within flashbacks. There might even be a fantasy inside of a flashback within another fantasy. The narrative is also dominated by an annoying voiceover that eventually made me wish Marianne Faithful would crash head on into something and fly through the air into the windshield of an oncoming car. Admittedly, I was a little cranky after a circus dream sequence near the beginning that ended much too soon. Actually, I would be very interested in watching a 91-minute prequel called Girl Standing on a Horse, but I'm not sure I want to see the current Marianne Faithful naked.



On second thought!

Here I am, bored with the movie and wondering if I should get my own motorcycle: