Une fille dans ma soupe

Goldie Hawn (The First Wives Club) plays Marion, and was for nominated by the British Academy Awards for best Actress. She is adorable in the part as usual. Marion is a very young American girl in Europe whose boy's friend is an idiot. Because of that she takes off with Robert Danvers, Peter Sellers (Pink Panther). Robert Danvers is a very famous and very rich television gourmet cook - a celebrity. She does not know about his fame. He is really smooth with women but she does not buy it at first. But with all that money she stays with him for awhile, but then goes back to the young boy friend. Nothing great about the plot. If you like Goldie, you can see her at a very young age. Just a silly comedy. It is just okay entertainment. Watch it on television. It does not justify the rental nor is it worth buying it

I love the message in this film; that we don't need to conform to the norms of society to be happy. We don't need to search for life's purpose because there isn't one, we can just be ourselves.

This is a charming, beautifully made drama about an upper class man who thinks he might be envious of the lifestyle of those whom society hasn't moulded into what's expected. It's about a free-spirited girl who thinks she might be envious of being part of a world she finds stuffy and rather ridiculous. Both Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn are perfect as the aging Lothario from a bygone age and the wild child of the sixties.

The story of mismatched lovers from different sides of the tracks is as old as Shakespeare and was used in what seemed to be about half of all the pre-code pictures of the early thirties. The society of the 1970s, when remnants of 1930s mindsets still ran through what is virtually 'modern times' with modern attitudes created two distinct societies happily existing side by side. Sellers' and Hawn's characters get together and embark as tourists in each other's lives. They're both cynical enough to know that this is just a holiday romance but they want to believe that their relationship can really work. Deep down however they're both too selfish to completely jettison their own ways of living and means of finding personal happiness.

Were this a 1930s film it would have either had a cheesy happy ending or a melodramatic tragic tear-jerking shocking denouement. Without giving anything away, the conclusion of this is much more like real life - it just goes on. That's not unsatisfying in fact it has quite a surprisingly optimistic feel.

Maybe because Peter Sellers is known for comedy this is wrongly assumed to be a comedy. Clearly it's not a comedy but despite its cynicism, it is uplifting. It's an intelligent and thoughtful study of an impossible relationship. Peter Sellers was a surprisingly good actor (with a surprisingly hairy back) but most impressive is Goldie Hawn who seems like she'd been acting for decades (with a reassuringly non-hairy back)

Dork that he was in real life, Peter Sellers plays the dork's idea of a English ladies man, a swinging bachelor just over 40 but using his money and notoriety as a TV food critic(!) to make time with beautiful girls. Against Goldi Hawn's 19-year-old, free-loving, introspective mod girl, he's just enough of a square to make him believable as well as pathetic.

After establishing his charm with a couple of lovelies, Sellers meets his match in Hawn, who turns out to like him for who he is (being American, she has no idea who he is). He rescues her from a juvenile relationship with a mod drummer, and they're off.

There are some great scenes between them as they work out their attraction with uncomfortable analysis. After some missteps over the attempted initial seduction and a wine-tasting trip to France, they settle into a charming relationship. But the news media misinterprets their getaway as a honeymoon, causing a bit of friction when they return to England, but it seems flat. The movie falls apart when Hawn's character makes an improbable decision (she seems to be kidding), but Sellers nearly saves it with a sympathetic performance.

The nonsensical ending and occasional out-of-place moments thruout make this one good but not great, provided you're interested in the late 60s-early 70s era.

THERE'S A GIRL IN MY SOUP (3 outta 5 stars) This movie has always had a bad reputation and I could never figure out why. Sure, Peter Sellers has been in much better movies than this... but he's been in lots worse, too. He plays the smarmy, self-absorbed star of a TV gourmet show who enjoys the swinging bachelor life, even as he hits his mid-40s. He meets up with Goldie Hawn, a hip, sexually-liberated young gal of less-than-20 and the sparks, as they say, fly. There are some really funny lines but a lot of missed comedic opportunities as well. To this day I still wonder why there is no big payoff to the wine-tasting scene... after all the time spent trying to teach Goldie that one is supposed to "spit" and not "swallow" I wonder why she doesn't wind up spitting up during a fancy dinner scene. This may not be one of Sellers' best but Goldie Hawn does a fine job... breaking free of the one-dimensional blonde ditz character that she was known for at the time. (She even gets a totally gratuitous nude scene... wow, this must be the '70s!)

I like Peter Sellers, most of the time. I had never seen him portray an upper-class Brit until this movie. He pulls it off pretty well, although you see bits of Inspector Clouseau in the mix. It doesn't get interesting until Goldie Hawn arrives.

I never expected the youthful Hawn to deliver such a solid performance. Her timing was great and her expressions were priceless. The way she alternately shoots Sellers lecherous character down and seduces him is beautiful to watch. Verbal sparring like I've seldom seen from a movie of that era.

The last thirty minutes of the movie DOES fall flat. It is worth the let down just to see the first sixty. Hawn is nude for a few glorious seconds early on. Enjoy it...