Une parisienne (1957)
Directed by Michel Boisrond

Film Review

Despite some very funny moments, this film is really little more than a pretty mediocre romantic farce.  It is almost embarrassing to watch such luminaries of French cinema as Charles Boyer, Henri Vidal and Brigitte Bardot trying to make something of such a lacklustre script.  That the film stands up at all is largely due to their combined efforts.  Brigitte Bardot in particular shows a natural flair for comedy and offers a generally pleasing performance.

The film would have worked better as a send-up to the kind of shallow overly sentimental films that were pouring out of Hollywood at the time.  Unfortunately, it seems more concerned with poking fun at the bourgeois elite without offering anything original.  The film resorts too willingly to cheap belly-laughs and inept one-liners which undermine the credibility of the piece.

The Bardot-Vidal cross-fire is amusing, but never quite believable, and how even Brigitte Bardot could so easily entrap a foreign prince stretches credulity to breaking point.  Still, if you don't take the film at all seriously and are after some harmless light entertainment, it should not be too much of a disappointment.

Film Synopsis

Brigitte Laurier, the remarkably good-looking daughter of the present Prime Minister of France, is used to getting her own way.  When she falls in love with Michel Legrand, her father's principal secretary, she is determined to marry him, even though he shows her no encouragement and has no interest in her.  Undeterred, Brigitte turns a chance meeting between Michel and his former mistress Caroline to her advantage and, to avoid a scandal, Michel has no choice but to make Brigitte his wife.  Brigitte's hopes that marriage would turn her reluctant beau idéal into a devoted husband prove to be misguided.  Aware of Michel's former reputation as a Casanova she suspects he is seeing other women, so to get her own back she decides to make him jealous - by throwing herself at the first man that comes by.  As luck would have it, that man happens to be Prince Charles, the consort of a country that is a close ally of France, during an official state visit.  The prince proves to be far from immune to Brigitte's obvious charms...