Movies:
Mississippi Mermaid
DVD Release
- Release Date: 2001
- French: mono
- Original theatrical trailer
- English, French, Spanish subtitles
- Rating:
- Genre: Drama
- Movie Type: Post-Noir (Modern Noir), Romantic Mystery
- Themes: Cons and Scams, Femmes Fatales, Assumed Identities
- Director: François Truffaut
- Main Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Bouquet, Nelly Borgeaud
- Release Year: 1969
- Country: FR/IT
- Run Time: 123 minutes
- MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
A rare mid-career flop for director François Truffaut when it was released, Mississippi Mermaid has become a cult favorite, thanks in part to the availability of the original French version, which added 13 minutes to the U.S. release running time. Adapted from a story by William Irish, it's a noirish tale of a man who orders a mail-order bride but receives instead a con woman. Louis Mahe (Jean-Paul Belmondo) owns a tobacco factory on the remote Indian Ocean island of Reunion. His bride, Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve), looks nothing like the photo she sent him, but she explains that she had forwarded a picture of a friend instead. After Louis allows Julie access to both his personal and company bank accounts, she disappears with most of his fortune. Heartbroken and bitter, he takes a holiday in the south of France and improbably spots "Julie" on a TV news story. When he tracks her down, she reveals her real name, Marion, and how she and her con-man boyfriend, Richard, had intercepted the real Julie on the boat Mississippi that was headed for Reunion. Richard threw Julie off the ship and Marion assumed her identity, but once the two thieves returned to France, Richard made off with the money. Marion professes that she fell in love with Louis, and he believes her. They try to make a life together in France, but a private detective whom Louis and Julie's sister, Berthe, had hired to find Marion, tracks them down to a house they have rented in Aix en Provence, forcing them to go on the run. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie GuideReview
Though it features the most attractive screen couple François Truffaut ever worked with and a love-conquers-all story, Mississippi Mermaid is also one of the darker films in the Truffaut canon. Louis (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a tough businessman with the soul of a romantic, while Marion (Catherine Deneuve) is a hard-bitten realist who's living from one scam to another. Louis' belief in love offers Marion a safe refuge, but the two also know that they can live together only by trying to outrun her sordid past. "Before I met you," Louis tells her, "I thought life was simple, but now I know it's not." This declaration occurs even before Louis is forced to kill a man to protect their freedom. Like Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou, which also featured Belmondo, Truffaut's film forces the viewer to root for a couple on the lam, a staple of the film noirs that Truffaut and Godard cut their filmgoing teeth on as teenagers. Truffaut's film, shot in glorious wide-screen color in beautiful locations, doesn't look like a noir, but when Louis admits to his business partner, "I can't say I'm happy with her, but I know that I'm unable to live without her," you know that he's got it bad and that ain't good. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie GuideCast
- Jean-Paul Belmondo - Louis
- Catherine Deneuve - Julie
- Michel Bouquet - Comolli
- Nelly Borgeaud - Berthe
Marcel Berbert - Jardine
Martine Ferrière - Landlady
Roland Thénot - Richard
