La novia del pirata

Nelly Caplan directs a 1969 tale of rural French hypocrisy, sex and revenge. Well, OK, that makes it sounds better than it is.

Marie lives with her mother, who then dies. She decides to revenge herself on the village for their treatment of her by selling her sexual favours to the men of the village from her woodland shack. Collecting watches appears to be her forte. The women and the priest eventually get outraged. She then gets revenge (of a sort).

Marie is a typical moody but seductive Frenchwoman. Sadly the promise of eroticism is not delivered. The tawdry side to life is suggested rather than explicit, and there is but a smattering of light nudity. However the whole thing is rather harmless when looked at from 21st century eyes. A modest little flick.

I v seen a girl like that, not so long time ago, and, though, this could be art, in real life someone like that is just a real scum. This one is funny and the fools around her are ridiculous. C est drole, anyway!

Some words about the story.Marie and her mother live apart of the village.Marie works for a lesbian farmer who exploits her totally, besides all the men of the village are harassing her.Her mother dies and then she begings charging for her sexual favors: of course all this respectuous men go to church every Sunday and are speaking badly about her.But her revenge will be very hard because she knows a lot of secrets about these men and their family. In this story about hipocrisy in a small village appears a sympathetic man, André, who shows films in the villages of the region and becomes a confident of Marie. Now some words about Bernadette Laffont (1938-2013), this French actress was "the face of the French New Wave "(she has worked with Truffaut,Chabrol, Jean Eustache), a very good actress. His friend André is interpreted by a very famous French actor Michel Constantin who has always had a great sense of humour.

The story of a 'pirate' woman and social outcast of a provincial village. She turns to prostitution and seduces her clients into ruin. The themes of mockery remain strong, despite the common background of a small hut with bright colors in woodland. Greed and bigotry are present throughout, yet are refreshed with humorous characters and twists in the dialogue. The final blow for sexual and social revenge in humorous sequence struck in the church. The heroine (Bernadette Lafont) dances off down the open road, leaving behind the remains of a strange abstract sculpture of fridges, showers and junk, as she is portrayed as yet another 'free spirit'.

...just as Manon des sources had done in Pagnol's film of 1952, to settle some old scores with the bigoted people in a small French town. The priest, the pharmacist, the bistro owner--they're all trying to cheat her in one way or another, and they all find her charms irresistible: no wonder, since she's played by Bernadette Lafont, the sexpot in so many films by Truffaut, Chabrol, Doniol-Valcroze, Molinaro etc. The story is flimsy, Kaplan's direction is loose and somewhat unfocused, and the viewer is left with the sense that this picture did not start a trend in French cinema (Bunuel, after all, was working the same vein at the time), nor is it the culmination of one.

I haven't seen Nelly Kaplan's other films, and don't feel any loss. I think she was more of a theorist than an auteur. The film goes along agreeably enough, and Lafont and Michel Constantin make an attractive couple, but this is hardly essential viewing.