IMDb > Une belle fille comme moi (1972) > IMDb user comments
Filter: Hide Spoilers:
Index 7 comments in total 

6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Truffaut covers many themes and the unexpected runs throughout this underrated classic, 5 June 2006
10/10
Author: Napoleonforever from ventura, california USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Humor, action, suspense, romance all rolled into this underrated Truffaut film; circa 1972 and probably was not well received during the titles' release. Starting out as a research project for female criminals, to "saving" an innocent prisoner then onto getting imprisoned yourself( The Professor) and the ultimate betrayals from the ones who are charged to protect people from such evils, the Attorney.

Bernadette Lafont stars as Camille, the imprisoned woman who has had bad luck since childhood( and she does not help her causes along the way at the most inopportune times), shines and carried this movie the entire way. Her beauty and expressions are at the highest levels ever seen on the silver screen.

Yes, many plots and twists, but they are all spaced and placed in order, via flashbacks in the very beginning, and the sequences of subsequent events throughout this film make sense. The audience is not quite sure if Camille deserved her fate in prison and what her true character is like; will she repay the Professor for freeing her as he freed her in kind? Did Camille have what it takes to be faithful to a man or did the continuing bad luck and survival force her into the "easier way out"? The audience cannot possibly expect how this movie turns out, thus achieving the rare quality of total suspense.

Cinematography is excellent for a 1972 film, and getting an Exterminator, Western-style Saloon washed-up whiskey-soaked wanna-be and the other characters were all a credit to good writing, and finally, fantastic directing by Truffaut. Part of the French New Wave of Cinema was the exclusion of Studio sets and backgrounds, and it is evident that Truffaut was a Master of locations as he selected unforgettable places and structures.

Many say Truffaut was an overrated director. I say not so. Truffaut was brilliant and left this world too soon. If you want to see overrated, keep seeing the Hollywood cookie-cutter promoted-to-the-hilt templates that are the cash-cow machine for the industry.

Was the above comment useful to you?

7 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
A jet black comedic gem, 10 November 1998
Author: Tito-8 from North Bay, Ontario

This is one of the best French comedies that I have ever come across. Most of the humour here is pretty silly stuff, but somehow it works, thanks in large part to Lafont's outstanding performance. But what makes this film a truly great piece of work is the unforgettable ending, a finish that cements it as one of the best black comedies that you'll ever see.

Was the above comment useful to you?

3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
WONDERFUL Film Truffaut's Best Comedy, 24 September 2008
10/10
Author: gump forresstt from United States

By any hack American filmmaker, the opening narration where it goes into a repeating echo to lead us into a flashback, would be considered fine art, and legitimately treated "ala Harrison Ford's The Fugitive" and thousands of other films. By film historian Truffaut, you know you're in for a wacky, silly comedy, which is unlike any other film he directed. It's a crime this has never been released in the USA, as it's far better than many of his films which are. Also it again pairs Truffaut with actress Lafont, the two hadn't worked together since his and her first film 13 years before.

I can't recommend this film enough, it's so much fun, and highly offensive as well.

Was the above comment useful to you?

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Real fun, 5 January 2009
9/10
Author: adrian290357 from Portugal

I must begin by admitting my headlong love for Truffaut's work. As connoisseur ratings go, this might not be his best film (Jules et Jim, Argent de Poche, Le Dernier Metro, Baisers Volés, Tirez sur le Pianiste, and Les 400 Coups are all at least as good and possibly better) but there is just so much life, tongue in cheek, unbridled pleasure in directing and in treating life as art, and the acting is so deceptively simple that I have to say this is probably my most favourite film by one of my most favourite directors. The initial sequence with the young dilettante's flatulent and cursing father kicking her rugby style sets the tone for the rest of the film, consistently pitting the stupidity of the male against the instinctive and openly unscrupulous intelligence of the leading female (there is hope yet in the typist but she is not the one all the men fall in love with...) Glorious comic touches sprinkle the film but if I had to select the cherry on this cake that would be the sequence where Denner, the rat exterminator, is waiting for Bernadette to come back from her visit to the singer. Look at how he tries to establish where the racing cars are that he hears but cannot see on the open road! Oh you must see this!

Was the above comment useful to you?

Truffaut's subtly, poetic, slightly disconcerting B movies--the contrast of delicacy and sordidness, 17 August 2008
7/10
Author: Cristi_Ciopron from CGSM, Soseaua Nationala 49

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pastiches in the noble sense of the word, Truffaut's B movies, semi—serious and intelligent, are constructed on an unusual report—the delicious contrast between the finesse and the brutality/ brusqueness. Finesse of conception, of treatment, of methods; brutality and brusqueness of the primary literary sources—testifying of Truffaut's decadent attraction towards the brutal and the sordid (Truffaut himself had a rather naughty adolescence, and his physiognomy shows a certain human stuff, there are Lombrosian traces that somehow are at odds or seem to contradict his reputation of a gentle, emasculate human being and his high and refined intellectuality; he obviously wanted to look like the angelic leads—Léaud …;he did not).

From this juxtaposing of finesse and brutality issue a nonchalance and a delicious contrast. The respective pictures are not _epigone flicks, they are not pastiches in this pejorative sense, they are not derivative—but ingenious, ironic, and contradictory. They are also highly cultured products—the same vacuum pomp found at Godard as well (with an entire different function in Truffaut's cinema, etc.). This artificiality might seem at first disconcerting; yet it is of a Hitchcockian efficiency, and strictly functional. This artificiality bears values—several values, either human, personal or artistic. It can not be dismissed as a defect. It is part of the charm.

Was the above comment useful to you?

8 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Released the same year his ex-friend was making 'Tout Va Bien'..., 8 November 2000
5/10
Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

Like Michael Winner, Truffaut thinks a feminist movie would be about a sexually promiscuous woman who turns the tables on a serious of idiotic men who are so caricatured that they bear little relation to the real oppressors facing women at this time, especially in institutionally misogynistic France.

I should really like this film, it has everything I wanted - directed by the maker of my three desert-island films; magic realism; a Chinese-whispers narrative structure; bawdy comedy; grotesques; superb performances. Bernadette Lafont is sprightly in the lead role, escaping all the traps men lay for her (including her director). Andre Dussolier is sensational is his first role as the intellectual, spectacles-wearing professor who can't see beyond his own nose, and Guy Marchand is hilarious as a spectacularly vain rock star.

All these things are good. The film isn't. Go figure.

Was the above comment useful to you?

4 out of 37 people found the following comment useful :-
Another so-so film by the world's most overrated director., 26 August 2002
Author: Guy Levin from Israel

Starting out "Une belle fille comme moi" seems like it might be going somewhere interesting - The study of the criminal female mind. But this film settles quickly into a silly immature comedy ripe with stereotypes and overacting. Alas, if only any of these were actually funny.

Was the above comment useful to you?

Add another comment

Related Links

Plot summary Ratings External reviews
Parents Guide Plot keywords Main details
Your user comments Your vote history