La femme écarlate

French-Italian co-production (in French with subtitles) stars Monica Vitti as a perfume factory owner in Paris who loses everything to her scheming lover and commercial manager. She contemplates suicide before deciding killing him might be more satisfying. A featherbrained piece of fluff from director Jean Valère, sexy at times and great eye-candy, but nothing more. Vitti--who, from some angles, resembles Barbra Streisand in a blonde wig--is charming picking up a strange man on the street and telling him her plans over lunch at the Eiffel Tower; however, her sojourns with members of a rock group (dancing and getting high) are silly and just take up time on the clock. ** from ****

Lightweight but colorful fluff about an attractive Italian young woman (Monica Vitti) who is jilted by her French lover/business partner (Robert Hossein) and goes away to Paris with the intention of committing suicide but then thinks better of it and decides to bump the latter off instead. In the meantime, to curb her boredom, she picks up a marine salvage expert (Maurice Ronet) but immediately dumps him after divulging all her plans to him during a romantic dinner atop the Eiffel Tower. Somehow, while posing as a Swiss journalist, she gets entangled with a New York correspondent (a woefully wasted Claudio Brook), a shady Spaniard and the dope-addled manager of a French beat group; the latter perform a couple of awfully dated pop tunes and Brook's presence in a nightclub immediately brought to mind the similar but infinitely more wicked sequence which brilliantly concludes Luis Bunuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT (1965) in which Brook had the title role.

Frankly, I had never heard of this one before it was pointed out to me at the local DVD rental store (via an Italian-dubbed version on R2 DVD) but the eclectic cast and a promise of a dash of psychedelia enticed me to give it a chance. Well, while it's certainly nothing I'd call remotely essential, it's quite a nice way to kill 90 minutes: Monica Vitti's classical beauty and charm is the film's ace card as she's in virtually every scene in various fetching Christian Dior outfits, but Michel Colombier's bubbly Morriconesque score (including a recurring mournful ballad) also makes quite an impression. While the names in the credits of his regular producer (Andre Genoves) and screenwriter (Paul Gegauff) should perhaps have alerted me to it, director Claude Chabrol's amusing uncredited cameo as a lift attendant on the Eiffel Tower took me completely by surprise.

The film is a delightful comedy giving Monica Vitti the chance to do what she does best. She has a twinkle in her eye as she handles men. She isn't lost for long when things don't work out.

They don't make stars like her anymore. She plays a confident sexy woman on her own in Paris while keeping her chic Dior clothes on. She is not a bimbo or a teenager but a free spirited woman enjoying herself. Look at her dance on the nightclub. She is gorgeous!

The film is typical of European movies of the time. Not much happening but plenty of style and with all the games grown up men and women played. It's a kind of a sophisticated comedy they don't make any longer.

Ok...nothing really to "upset" you in anyway here...but the atmosphere...colors...Paris...clothes.....music....everything just makes me wanna travel back in time and be a part of this filmproduction. Easy viewing film you can "easily"(!!) label this little Euro gem. Monica Vitti looks wonderful...a bit like Elke Sommer in Mario bava's Lisa And The Devil. But it's lightweight context here...nothing to worry about. No violence...sex....creepiness....just a charming experience which I recommend you check up on any day. I saw the extremely rare danish x-rental version...83.02 mins... letterboxed....english language. Best of all...I'll add it to my collection...no other collector buys this off'a me...nope.

Monica Vitti thinks she's a good businesswoman. Then she discovers her manager/lover, Robert Hossein, has stolen her business. She flies to Paris to commit suicide, then decides on a better plan. Hossein will be in Paris on Friday. She steals a gun, planning to kill him. First, though, she tells Maurice Ronet, then vanishes from his ken. While he is searching desperately for her, she is cutting a swath among the news reporters and the British band they are interviewing.

Jean Valère's ultimately standard romantic comedy is powered in large part by Miss Vitti's moody, disinterested performance, and a set and costume design that features a lot of bright red clothes and draperies. M. Ronet also gives a fine performance as the moral young man who does not even recognize he loves this woman who invited him to lunch on the Eiffel Tower. It's a very 1960s looking movie. There's a bit of satire on the propensities of rock-and-rollers. but this is never a farcical comedy. It is, however, constantly engaging.