The "woman of Paris" of the title is Brigitte Laurier, the gorgeous blonde twenty-something daughter of the French President, played by her namesake La Bardot. (Contrary to what the synopsis on my DVD cover might say, Monsieur Laurier is not an "Ambassador"). Now you might think that just about every heterosexual male in the France of the 1950s would have been passionately in love with the fair Brigitte, but in this film she is suffering from a severe case of unrequited love. The man in question is Michel Legrand – not the famous musician of that name, but a handsome aide to her father. The reason for Michel's lack of ardour is not that he is gay, blind or mad, but simply that he is far more interested in his various mistresses, even though they are generally married and both older and less attractive than Brigitte.
Despite Michel's lack of interest, Brigitte is nothing if not persistent, and in one particularly farcical scene she is able to trick him into marriage. He is placed in a dilemma whereby he has to choose between admitting (falsely) to being Brigitte's lover, in which case her father will insist on their marrying in order to preserve the good name of the family, or admitting (truthfully) to being the lover of a married woman, which as the deceived husband is one of his colleagues will probably lead to a scandal and the end of his career.
Marriage, however, does not seem to calm Michel down, and he soon falls back into his old ways, making assignments with his old flame Monique Wilson. To teach him a lesson, therefore, Brigitte tries to arouse his jealousy by pretending to flirt with Prince Charles, the husband of Queen Greta, a European monarch currently on a State Visit to France. As Brigitte's father is their host, it is easy for her to gain access to the Royal couple.
Again, my DVD cover gets it wrong here. It says that "Charles and Greta fly back to England", but they are not- officially at least- British. They supposedly represent a fictitious European, possibly Scandinavian, country. It did, however, occur to me that the characters might have been inspired by the way in which the British Royal Family was viewed in the late fifties. Just as Elizabeth II was in 1957, Greta is a beautiful young woman in her early thirties, but comes across as rather staid and conservative, obsessed with her official duties to the exclusion of all else, and not a lot of fun. Charles, like Prince Philip, is older than his wife and often seen dressed in naval uniform. Although there is no evidence that Philip was ever unfaithful, there was a lot of speculation around this period that he had a roving eye- as Charles certainly does. The use of the name "Charles" might have been a coded hint that the screenwriter had the British monarchy in mind, even though the real Prince Charles would only have been a young boy at the time. (Dalton Trumbo had done something similar in "Roman Holiday" four years earlier when he called his royal heroine, clearly based upon Queen Elizabeth, "Princess Anne").
Bardot was often described as a "sex kitten", a term which did not necessarily refer to her youth as the description continued to be applied to her even in her thirties. The implication of the phrase was that, at least in her comic roles, she combined sexual attractiveness with a certain innocence and playfulness; in this her screen persona was somewhat similar to that of Marilyn Monroe. (Indeed, Brigitte was sometimes regarded as France's answer to Marilyn).
This film is a good example of what I mean, The Anglo-Saxon peoples have often regarded the French- sometimes enviously, sometimes censoriously- as being more progressive and permissive in sexual matters than their own countries, but in fact during the 1950s France was probably as conservative in such matters as anywhere else in the Western world and operated its own system of film censorship. At this period a fully-fledged French sex comedy would probably have been unthinkable as a British or American one, but "Une Parisienne" has a lot in common with "sophisticated" Hollywood comedies of the time such as the Monroe vehicle "The Seven Year Itch". It is a film where there is a lot of talk about adultery, but no nudity and no sex scenes; when two characters end up in the same bed they both remain fully clothed. We are never sure whether all that talk is ever anything more than just talk; Brigitte and Charles never actually cheat on their respective spouses, although he certainly has the intention of doing so, and a discreet veil is left drawn over the question of whether Michel and Monique actually sleep together after his marriage.
The story is an ingenious one and is handled with a good deal of wit and style. Bardot (a much better actress in her native language than she ever was in English) is absolutely adorable. Hollywood did not have a monopoly on sophisticated comedy in the fifties. 8/10
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