AVERY CURIOUS GIRL Movie Review

La Fiancee du Pirate
Dirty Mary
Pirate's Fiancee

This strange little picture created a modest art house buzz in 1969. It is director Nelly Kaplan's merger of a bawdy, farmer's-daughter fable with a hard-line, feminist revenge fantasy. Bernadette Lafont is Marie, the physically desirable but socially outcast form of amusement for the smug and hypocritical men of her small rural village. Her well-plotted revenge finds Marie deciding to charge money for her favors, which puts her in the position of being able to blackmail those who do business with her. It turns out to be an effective way of turning the tables of power, yet the movie is just never inventive enough to be truly engaging, nor vicious enough to really sting. The movie tries to stay whimsical, and the tone just seems all wrong. Its primary attraction—and it's a considerable one—is an electric performance by the wonderful Bernadette Lafont, who energized many key French films of the 1960s and 1970s, including Jean Eustache's landmark epic The Mother and the Whore.

NEXT STOP … Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me, Son of Gascogne, The Mother and the Whore

1969 (R) 105m/C FR Bernadette LaFont, Georges Geret, Michel Constantin, Julien Guiomar, Claire Maurier; D: Nelly Kaplan; W: Nelly Kaplan, Claude Makovski; C: Jean Badal; M: Georges Moustaki. VHS NO