A Noiva do 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.

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'.

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!

LA FIANCÉE DU PIRATE 's greatest asset is the gorgeous Bernadette Lafont, and certainly the sexual favors she bestows (at a price) on her local "clients" as she avenges the killing of her pet goat, and breaks free of near-slave bondage, are easy on the viewer's eye.

Rather dark humor runs right through the film, but that has always been one of Lafont's trademarks, and she is most comfortable in the nude in all her films. Her mother's death and burial is odd in the extreme, adding to the film's general screwball approach. The script is rather loose - to put it mildly -, the characters all seem to be on the verge of madness, photography is rather shabby, and direction... well, Director Nelly Kaplan seems quite satisfied to just let Lafont do what she likes, and it is plain to see that Lafont had a wonderful time doing the shoot.

Only the French, and perhaps the Italians, could have come up with such a rambling oddity of a sexual story... nothing memorable about it, apart from curvaceous, daring, brazen Lafont. How I love watching her!

...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.