Perfectly adorable

Brilliant and touching

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

...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.

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'.

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.

...but in 1969,she began to stand on her own two feet.And it was a masterstroke."La fiancée du pirate" was a highly successful movie which has stood the test of time quite well.Marie (Bernadette Laffont's vulgarity works wonders here) and her mother have always been outcasts ,living outside the village in a hut.Marie works on a farm where the lesbian farmer exploits her sexually and economically,and all the guys around treat her like a whore.When her mother dies,Marie does not want any religious funeral.Then begins Marie's revenge.Now she makes all the men from the village pay for her charms .She will turn all the hypocrite mean bourgeois's life upside town ,and her wholesale massacre comes to a head in the church where a tape recorder reveals the secrets ,warts an all.Nothing intellectual here,but a good sense of humor.It proves that sex can lead to (local) woman's lib.